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RIVIERA 
TOWNS 



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'The hill of Cagnes we could rave about" 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



By 
HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS 



With Thirty-two Full-Page Illustrations 

By 
LESTER GEORGE HORNBY 




NEW YORK 
ROBERT M. McBRIDE Gf CO. 

1920 



Copyright, 1920, by 
Robert M. McBride & Co, 

1 



H^'^ 



? 



Copyright, 1917, 1918, 1920, 
By Hakfer & Brothers 



Printed in the 
United States of America 



Of this first edition of Riviera 
Towns only two thousand 
copies have been printed 



First Published 1920 

S)C(.A601.?07 



;^0V 26 1920 



'ViO I 



To 

Helen and Margaret 

Who Indulge 

The Author and the Artist 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

We wish to thank the editors of Harper's 
Magazine for allowing the republication 
of articles and illustrations. 

H. A. G. 

L. G. H. 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

L Grasse 3 

II. Cagnes 21 

III. Saint-Paul-du-Var 39 

IV. VILLENEUVE-LOUBET 55 

V. Vence 71 

VI. Menton 79 

VII. Monte Carlo 89 

yill. ViLLEFRANCHE lOI 

IX. Nice in 

X. Antibes 123 

XL Cannes 135 

XII. MouGiNs 149 

XIII. Frejus 163 

XIV. Saint-Raphael 179 

XV. Theoule 191 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

"The hill of Cagnes we could rave about" . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

"His eye had caught a fourteenth-century cul-de-sac" 8 

"A grandfather omnibus, which dated from the Second 

Empire" ^4 

"Beyond, the Mediterranean rose to the horizon" . . 24 

"The houses of the Moorish quarter are built into the 

ancient city walls" 3^ 

"The walls rose sheer, and only the outer houses, di- 
rectly behind the ramparts, were in our line of 
vision" ,• 44 

"The houses in the courts were stables downstairs" . 50 

"A castle of unusual size and severity of outline rises 

above the trees of a park" 5^ 

"Villeneuve-Loubet is built against a cliff. The houses 

rise on tiers of stone terraces" 60 

"The river was swirling around willows and poplars" 66 

"Down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick 

with violets" 74 

"Ancient £ze is on a lower hill midway between you 

and the Mediterranean" 80 

"La Turbie is not a town to hurry away from after 
lunch. Its leaning houses brought out the Ar- 
tist's pencil" 84 

"The strength of Monaco is the weakness of the 

world" 92 

"Medieval streets and buildings have almost disap- 
peared" 102 

"Italian in blood and culture and instincts" .... 112 
ix 



X ILLUSTRATIONS 

"The Old Town takes you far from the psychology of 

cosmopolitanism and the philosophy of hedonism" 1 18 

"The French atmosphere begins to impress one at 

Antibes" 124 

"Saint-Honor at was a monastic establishment from the 

fourth century to the Revolution" 130 

"La Napoule, above whose tower on the sea rose a 
hill crowned with the ruins of a chapel. Behind 
were the Maritime Alps" 136 

"A bit out of the past, and of another world in the 

present" 140 

"Around Cannes the gardens are more important than 

the buildings" 142 

"There is less charm in the sellers than at Nice" . . 144 

"The arch of a city gate lost itself in a modem build- 
ing across the street" 152 

"Mougins lives in medieval fashion, and has no use for 

gutters and drains" 156 

"The Corniche de I'Esterel is a road of copper rocks 

and azure sea" 164 

"Frejus belongs to no definite period. It has no 
marked racial characteristics in architecture or 
inhabitants" 166 

"Arose a huge square tower of the Norman period" . 168 

"Exploring the alleys of the medieval quarter" . . 174 

"We discovered that Saint-Raphael had its old town" 184 

"To the west the Gulf of La Napoule ends in the pine- 
covered promontory of the Esquillon" . . . . 194 

"Despite curves, the road is continuously steep, and 
keeps a heavy grade until it reaches the' Pointe de 
I'Esquillon" 200 



GRASSE 



J I] 




JKfl 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



CHAPTER I 
Grasse 

FOR several months I had been seeing Grasse every- 
day. The atmosphere of the Midi is so clear that a 
city fifteen miles away seems right at hand. You can 
almost count the windows in the houses. Against the ris- 
ing background of buildings every tower stands out, and 
you distinguish one roof from another. From my study 
window at Theoule, Grasse was as constant a tempta- 
tion as the two islands in the Bay of Cannes. But the 
things at hand are the things that one is least liable to 
do. They are reserved for "some day" because they can 
be done "any day." Since first coming to Theoule, I had 
been a week's journey south of Cairo into the Sudan, 
and to Verdun in an opposite corner of France. Menton 
[3] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



and St. Raphael, the ends of the Riviera, had been vis- 
ited. Grasse, two hours away, remained unexplored. 

I owe to the Artist the pleasure of becoming acquainted 
with Grasse. One day a telegram from Bordeaux stated 
that he had just landed, and was taking the train for 
Theoule. The next evening he arrived. I gave him my 
study for a bedroom. The following morning he looked 
out of the window, and asked, "What is that town up 
there behind Cannes, the big one right under the moun- 
tains?" 

"Grasse, the home of perfumes," I answered, 

"I don't care what it's the home of," was his charac- 
teristic response. "Is it old and all right?" ("All right" 
to the Artist means "full of subjects.") 

"I have never been there," I confessed. 

(The Artist was fresh from New York. "We'll go 
this morning," he announced. 

From sea to mountains, the valley between the Comiche 
de I'Esterel and Nice produces every kind of vegetation 
known to the Mediterranean littoral. Memories of Spain, 
Algeria,, Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy 
are constantly before you. But there is a difference. 
The familiar trees and bushes and flowers of the Orient 
do not spring here from bare earth. Even where culti- 
vated land, wrested from the mountain sides, is labo- 
riously terraced, stones do not predominate. Earth and 
rock are hidden by a thick undergrowth of grass and 
creepers that defies the sun, and draws from the nearby 
mountain snow a perennial supply of water. Olive and 
[4] 



GRASSE 

plane, almond and walnut, orange and lemon, cedar and 
cork, palm and umbrella-pine, grape-vine and flower-bush 
have not the monopoly of green. It is the Orient with- 
out the brown, the Occident with the sun. 

The Mediterranean is more blue than elsewhere be- 
cause firs and cedars and pines are not too green. The 
cliffs are more red than elsewhere because there is no 
prevailing tone of bare, baked earth to modify them 
into brown and gray. On the Riviera one does not have 
to give up the rich green of northern landscapes to enjoy 
the alternative of brilliant sunshine. 

As we rode inland toward Grasse, the effect of green 
underground and background upon Oriental foliage was 
shown in the olives, dominant tree of the valley and hill- 
sides. It was the old familiar olive of Africa and Asia 
and the three European peninsulas, just as gnarled, just 
as gray-green in the sun, just as silvery in the wind. But 
its colors did not impress themselves upon the landscape. 
Here the olive was not master of all that lives and grows 
in its neighborhood. In a landscape where green replaces 
brown and gray pink, the olive is not supreme. Its own 
foliage is invaded : for frequently rose ramblers get up 
into its branches, and shoot out vivid flashes of crimson 
and scarlet. There is also the yellow of the mimosa, and 
the inimitable red of the occasional judas-tree. Orange 
trees blossom white. Lilacs and wisteria give the shades 
between red and blue. As if in rebellion against too much 
green, the rose-bushes put forth leaves of russet-brown. 
It is a half-hearted protest, however, for Grasse rose- 
[5] 



KIVIERA TOWNS 



bushes are sparing of leaves. Carefully cultivated for the 
purpose of bearing to the maximum, every shoot holds 
clusters beyond what would be the breaking-point were 
there not artificial support. Nature's yield is limited only 
by man's knowledge, skill and energy. 

As we mounted steadily the valley, we had the impres- 
sion that there was nothing ahead of us but olives. First 
the perfume of oranges and flowers would reach us. 
Then the glory of the roses would burst upon us, and we 
looked up from them to the flowering orange trees. 
Wherever there was a stretch of meadow, violets and 
daisies and buttercups ran through the grass. Plowed 
land was sprinkled with mustard and poppies. The olive 
had been like a curtain. When it lifted as we drew near, 
we forgot that there were olives at all ! 

The Artist developed at length his favorite theory that 
the richest colors, the sweetest scents were those of blos- 
soms that bloomed for pure joy. The most delicate fla- 
vors were those of fruits and berries that grew without 
restraint or guidance. "Nature is at her best," he ex- 
plained, "when you do not try to exploit her. Compare 
wild strawberries and wild asparagus with the truck the 
farmers give you. Is wisteria useful ? What equals the 
color of the judas-tree in bloom? Do fruit blossoms, 
utilitarian embryo, compare for a minute with real flow- 
ers? Just look at all these flowers, bom for the sole 
purpose of expressing themselves!" All the while we 
were sniffing orange-blossoms. I tried in vain to get his 
honest opinion on horse-chestnut blossoms as compared 
[6] 



GRASSE 

with apples and peaches and apricots. I called his atten- 
tion to the fact that the ailanthus lives only to express 
itself, while the maple gives sugar. But you can never 
argue with the Artist when he is on the theme of beauty 
for beauty's sake. 

From the fairyland of the valley we came suddenly 
upon the Grasse railway station, from which a funiculaire 
ascends to the city far above. Thankful for our carriage, 
we continued to mount by a road that had to curve sharply 
at every hundred yards. We passed between villas with 
pergolas of ramblers and wisteria until we found our- 
selves in the upper part of the city without having gone 
through the city at all. 

We got out at the promenade, where a marvelous view 
of the Mediterranean from Antibes to Theoule lies before 
you. The old town falls down the mountain-side from 
the left of the promenade. We started along a street that 
seemed to slide down towards the cathedral, the top of 
whose belfry hardly reaches the level of the promenade. 
Before we had gone a block, we learned that the flowers 
through which we had passed were not blooming for pure 
joy. Like many things in this dreary world of ours, 
they were being cultivated for money's sake and not for 
beauty's sake. Grasse lives from those flowers in the 
valley below. We had started to look for quaint houses. 
From one of the first doors in the street came forth an 
odor that made us think of the type of woman who calls 
herself "a lady." I learned early in life at the barber's 
that a little bit of scent goes too far, and some women 
[7] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



in public places who pass you fragrantly do not allow 
that lesson to be forgotten. Is not lavender the only scent 
in the world that does not lose by an overdose ? 

The Artist would not enter. His eye had caught a 
fourteenth-century cul-de-sac, and I knew that he was 
good for an hour. I hesitated. The vista of the street 
ahead brought more attraction to my eye than the indi- 
cation of the perfume-factory to my nose. But there 
would still be time for the street, and in the acquisition 
of knowledge one must not falter. I knew only that per- 
fumes were made from flowers. But so was honey! 
What was the difference in the process? Visiting per- 
fumeries is evidently "the thing to do" in Grasse. For 
I was greeted cordially, and given immediately a guide, 
who assured me that she would show me all over the place 
and that it was no trouble at all. 

Why is it that some of the most delicate things are asso- 
ciated with the pig, who is himself far from delicate? 
However much we may shudder at the thought of soused 
pigs' feet and salt pork and Rocky Mountain fried ham 
swimming in grease, we find bacon the most appetizing 
of breakfast dishes, and if cold boiled ham is cut thin 
enough nothing is more dainty for sandwiches. Lard 
per se is unpleasant, but think of certain things cooked in 
lard, and the unrivaled golden brown of them ! Pigskin 
is as recherche as snakeskin. The pig greets us at the 
beginning of the day when we slip our wallet into our 
coat or fasten on our wrist- watch, and again when we go 
in to breakfast. But is it known that he is responsible 
[8] 




'!,*« 
"-^^i''^ 



"His eye had caught a fourteenth-century cul-de-sac' 



GRASSE 

for the most exquisite of scents of milady's boudoir? 
For hundreds of years ways of extracting the odor of 
flowers were tried. Success never came until someone 
discovered that pig fat is the best absorbent of the bouquet 
of fresh flowers. 

Room after room in the perfume factory is filled with 
tubs of pig grease. Fresh flowers are laid inside every 
morning for weeks, the end of the treatment coming only 
with the end of the season of the particular flower in 
question. In some cases it is continued for three months. 
The grease is then boiled in alcohol. The liquid, strained, 
is your scent. The solid substance left makes scented 
soap. Immediately after cooling, it is drawn off directly 
into wee bottles, the glass stoppers are covered with white 
chamois skin, and the labels pasted on. 

I noticed a table of bottles labeled eau-de-cologne. 
"Surely this is now eau-de-liege in France," I remarked. 
"Are not German names taboo ?" 

My guide answered seriously : "We have tried our best 
here and in every perfumery in France. But dealers tell 
us that they cannot sell eau-de-liege, even though they 
assure their customers that it is exactly the same product, 
and explain the patriotic reason for the change of name. 
Once we launched a new perfume that made a big hit. 
Afterwards we discovered that we had named it from 
the wrong flower. But could we correct the mistake? 
It goes today by the wrong name all over the world." 

I was glad to get into the open air again, and started 
to walk along the narrow Rue Droite — which makes a 
[9] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



curve every hundred feet! — ^to find the Artist. I had 
seen enough of Grasse's industry. Now I was free to 
wander at will through the maze of streets of the old 
town. But the law of the Persians follows that of the 
Medes. Half a dozen urchins spied me coming out of 
the perfumery, and my doom was sealed. They an- 
nounced that they would show me the way to the con- 
fectionery. I might have refused to enter the per- 
fumery. But, having entered, there was no way of es- 
caping the confectionery. I resigned myself to the in- 
evitable. It was by no means uninteresting, however, — 
the half hour spent watching violets, orange blossoms 
and rose petals dancing in cauldrons of boiling sugar, 
fanned dry on screens, and packed with candied fruits 
in wooden boxes for America. And I had followed the 
flowers of Grasse to their destination. 

The Artist had finished his cul-de-sac. I knew that 
to find him I had only to continue along the Rue Droite 
to the first particularly appealing side street. He would 
be up that somewhere. The Artist is no procrastinator. 
He takes his subjects when he finds them. The build- 
ings of the Rue Droite are medieval from rez-de- 
chaussee to cornice. The sky was a narrow curved slit 
of blue and gray, not as wide as the street ; for the houses 
seemed to lean towards one another, and here and there 
roofs rubbed edges. Sidewalks would have prevented 
the passage of horse-drawn vehicles, so there were none. 
The Rue Droite is the principal shopping-street of Grasse. 
But shoppers cannot loiter indefinitely before windows. 

[10] 



GRASSE 

All pedestrians must be agile. When you hear the Hue! 
of a driver, you must take refuge in a dooi^vay or run 
the risk of axle-grease and mud. Twentieth-century 
merchandise stares out at you from either side^ — Paris 
hats and gowns, American boots, typewriters, sewing- 
machines, phonographs, pianos. One of the oldest cor- 
ner buildings, which looks as if it needed props im- 
mediately to save you from being caught by a falling 
wall, is the emporium of enamel bathtubs and stationary 
washstands, with shining nickel spigots labeled "Hot" 
and "Cold." These must be intended for the villas of 
the environs, for surely no home in this old town could 
house a bathroom. Where would the hot water and 
cold water come from? And where would it go after 
you opened the waste-pipe? 

But there are sewers, or at least drains, on the hill- 
side. Grasse has progressed beyond the gare-d-l'eau 
stage of municipal civilization. Before your eyes is the 
evidence that you no longer have to listen for that cry, 
and duck the pot or pail emptied from an upper window. 
Pipes, with branches to the windows, come down the 
sides of the houses. They are of generous size, as in 
cities of northern countries where much snow lies on 
the roofs. Since wall-angles are many, the pipes gen- 
erally find a place in comers. They do not obtrude. 
They do not suggest zinc or tin. They were painted a 
mud-gray color a long time ago. 

After lunch, we strolled along the Boulevard du Jeu- 
de-Ballon, the tramway street. In old French towns, the 
[II] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



words boulevard and tramway are generally anathema. 
They suggest the poor imitation of Paris, both in archi- 
tecture and animation, of a street outside the magic 
circle of the unchanged which holds the charm of the 
town. But sometimes, in order to come as near as pos- 
sible to the center of population, the tramway boulevard 
skirts the fortifications of the medieval city, or is built 
upon their emplacement. It is this way at Grasse. One 
side of the Boulevard du Jeu-de-Ballon is modem and 
commonplace. The other side preserves in part the 
buildings of past ages. Here and there a bit of tower 
remains. No side street breaks the line. You go down 
into the city through an occasional arched passage. 

We stopped for coffee at the Garden-Bar, on the 
modem side of the boulevard. The curious hodge-podge 
opposite, which houses the Restaurant du Cheval Blanc 
and the Cafe du Globe, had caught the Artist's eye. The 
building, or group of buildings, is six stories high, with 
a sky-line that reflects the range of mountains under 
which Grasse nestles. Windows of different sizes, 
placed without symmetry or alignment, do not even 
harmonize with the roof above them. Probably there 
was originally a narrow house rising directly above the 
door of the Cheval Blanc. When the structure was 
widened, upper floors or single rooms were built on ad 
libitum. The windows give the clew to this evolution, 
for the wall has been plastered and whitewashed uni- 
formly to the width of over a hundred feet, and there 
is only one entrance on the ground floor. Working 

[12] 



GRASSE 

out the staircases and floor levels is a puzzle for an 
architect. We did not even start to try to solve it. 
The Artist's interest was in the "subject," and mine in 
the story the building told of an age when man's in- 
dividual needs influenced his life more strongly than they 
do now. We think of the progress of civilization in the 
terms of combination, organization, community interest, 
the centralized state. We have created a machine to 
serve us, and have become servants of the machine. 
When we thank God unctuously that we live not as our 
ancestors lived and as the "uncivilized" live today, we 
are displaying the decay of our mental faculties. Is it 
the Arab at his tent door, looking with dismay and dread 
at the approach of the Bagdad Railway, who is the fool, 
or we? 

Backed up at right angles to the stoop of the Cheval 
Blanc was a grandfather omnibus, which certainly dated 
from the Second Empire. Its sign read: CRASSE- 
ST. CEZAIRE. SERVICE DE LA POSTE. The 
canvas boot had the curve of ocean waves. A pert 
little hood stuck out over the driver's seat. The pair of 
lean horses — one black, the other white — stood with 
noses turned towards the tramway rails. The Artist was 
still gazing skylineward. I grasped his arm, and brought 
his eyes to earth. No word was needed. He fumbled 
for his pencil. But to our horror the driver had 
mounted, and was reaching for the reins. I got across 
the street just in time to save the picture. Holding out 
cigars to the driver and a soldier beside him on the box, 
[13] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



I begged them to wait — please to wait — just five minutes, 
five little minutes. 

"There is no place for another passenger. We are 
full inside," he remonstrated. 

But he had dropped the reins to strike a match. In 
the moment thus gained, I got out a franc, and pressed 
it into his hand. 

"Your coach, my friend," I said, "is unique in all 
France. The coffee of that celebrated artist yonder 
sitting at the terrace of the Garden-Bar is getting cold 
while he immortalizes the Grasse-St. Cezaire service. 
In the interest of art and history, I beg of you to delay 
your departure ten little minutes." 

The soldier had found the cigar to his liking. "A 
quarter of an hour will do no harm at all," he announced 
positively, getting down from his place. 

The driver puffed and growled. "We have our 
journey to make, and the hour of departure is one-thirty. 
If it is not too long — fifteen minutes at the most." He 
pocketed the franc less reluctantly than he had spoken. 

The soldier crossed the boulevard with me. Know- 
ing how to appreciate a good thing, he became our ally 
as soon as he had looked at the first lines of the sketch. 
When the minutes passed, and the soldier saw that the 
driver was growing restless, he went back and persuaded 
him to come over and have a look at the drawing. This 
enabled me to get the driver tabled before a tall glass 
of steaming coffee with a petit verre. 

Soon an old dame, wearing a bonnet that antedated 
[14] 



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'A grandfather omnibus, which dated from the 
Second Empire" 



GRASSE 

the coach, stuck out her head. A watch was in her 
hand. Surely she was not of , the Midi. Fearing that 
she might influence the driver disadvantageously to our 
interests, I went to inform her that the delay was un- 
avoidable. I could not offer her a cigar. There are 
never any bonbons in my pocket. So I thought to make 
a speech. 

"All my excuses," I explained, "for this regrettable 
delay. The coach in which you are seated — and in which 
in a very, very few minutes you will be riding — belongs 
to the generation before yourself and me. It is im- 
portant for the sake of history as well as art that the 
presence in Grasse of my illustrious artist friend, coin- 
cident with the St. Cezaire coach before the door of the 
Cheval Blanc, be seized upon to secure for our grand- 
children an indelible memory of travel conditions in our 
day. So I beg indulgence." 

Two schoolgirls smothered a snicker. There was a 
dangerous glitter in the old dame's eye. She did not 
answer me. But a young woman raised her voice in a 
threat to have the driver dismissed. Enough time had 
been gained. The Artist signified his willingness to have 
the mail leave now for St. Cezaire. 

Off went the coach, white horse and black horse clat- 
tering alternately hoofs that would gladly have remained 
longer in repose. The soldier saluted. The driver 
grinned. We waved to the old woman with the poke 
bonnet, and lifted our glasses to several pretty girls who 
appeared at the coach door for the first time in order 
[15] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



that they might glare at us. I am afraid I must record 
that it was to glare. Our friendly salutation was not 
answered. But we had the sketch. That was what 
really mattered. 

We were half an hour late at the rendezvous with our 
carriage man for the return journey to Cannes. But 
he had lunched well, and did not seem to mind. Ameri- 
cans were scarce this season, and fortes pourboires few 
and far between. On the Riviera — as elsewhere — you 
benefit by your fellow-countrymen's generosity in the 
radiant courtesy and good nature of those who serve 
you until you come to pay your bill. Then you think 
you could have got along pretty well with less smiles. 
We knew that our man would not risk his pourboire by 
opposing us, so we suggested with all confidence that he 
drive round the curves alone and meet us below by the 
railway station in "half an hour." We wanted to go 
straight down through the city. The cocher looked at 
his watch and thought a minute. He had already seen 
the Artist stop suddenly and stay glued on one spot, like 
a cat patiently waiting to spring upon a bird. He had 
seen how often oblivion to time comes. The lesser of 
two evils was to keep us in sight. So he proposed with 
a sigh what we could never have broached to him. "Per- 
haps we can drive down through the city — why not?" 
"Why not?" we answered joyously in unison, as we 
jumped into the victoria. 

Down is down in Grasse. I think our cocher did not 
realize what he was getting into, or he would have pre- 
[i6] 



GRASSE 

ferred taking his chances on a long wait. He certainly 
did not know his way through the old town. He asked 
at every corner, each time more desperately, as we be 
came engaged in a maze of narrow streets, which were 
made before the days of victorias. There was no way 
of turning. We had to go down — ^precipitously down. 
With brake jammed tight, and curses that echoed from 
wall to wall and around corners, the cocher held the 
reins to his chest. The horses, gently pushed forward, 
much against their will, by the weight of the carriage, 
planted all fours firm and slid over the stones that cen- 
turies of sabots and hand-carts had worn smooth. The 
noise brought everyone to windows and doors, and the 
sight kept them there. Tourist victorias did not coast 
through Grasse every day. Advice was freely proffered. 
The angrier our cocher became the more frequently he 
was told to put on his brake and hold tight to the reins. 

After half an hour we came out at the funicular be- 
side the railway station. 

"How delightful, and how fortunate!" exclaimed the 
Artist. "That certainly was a short cut. We have 
saved several kilometers!" 

I thought the cocher would explode. But he merely 
nodded. Far be it from me to say that he did not under- 
stand the Artist's French for "short cut." Perhaps he 
thought best to save all comment until the hour of 
reckoning arrived. He did not need to. The ride back 
to the sea was through the fairyland of the morning 
climb, enhanced a thousandfold, as all fairylands are, 
[17] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



by the magic of the twilight. One never can make it up 
to hired horses for their work and wilHngness and 
patience. But we did Hve up to local American tradi- 
tion in regard to the cocher. 



[i8] 



CAGNES 



[19] 




CHAPTER II 

Cagnes 

AMERICAN and English visitors to the Riviera 
soon come to know Cagnes by name. It is a chal- 
lenge to their ability to pronounce French — a. challenge 
that must be accepted, if you are in the region of 
Grasse or Nice or Antibes. Two distinct tramway lines 
and several roads lead from Grasse to Cannes and 
Cagnes. Unless you are very careful, you may find 
yourself upon the wrong route. Once on the Cagnes 
tramway, or well engaged upon the road to Cagnes, when 
you had meant to go to Cannes, the mistake takes hours 
to retrieve. At Nice, chauffeurs and cockers love to 
cheat you by the confusion of these two names. You 
bargain for the long trip to Cannes, and are attracted by 
the reasonable price quoted. In a very short time you 
are at Cagnes. The vehicle stops. Impossible to rectify 
your mispronunciation without a substantial increase of 
the original sum of the bargain. Antibes is between 

[21] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



Cagnes and Cannes. Cagnes is nearer, and it is always 
to Cannes that you want to go. Spell the name, or write 
it on a piece of paper, if you are to be sure that you 
will be taken west instead of east. 

The place, as well as the name, is familiar to all 
travelers — from a distance. Whether you move by train, 
by tramway or by automobile, you see the city set on a 
hill between Cannes and Nice. But express trains do not 
stop. The tramway passes some distance from the old 
town, and prospect of the walk and climb is not allur- 
ing to the tramway tourist, whose goal is places impor- 
tant enough to have a map in Baedeker, or a double- 
starred church or view. If motorists are not in a hurry 
to get to a good lunch, their chauffeurs are. You signal 
to stop, and express a desire to go up into Cagnes. The 
hired chauffeur declares emphatically that it cannot be 
done. If you do not believe him, he drives you to the 
foot of the hill, and you see with your own eyes. Re- 
gretfully you pass on to towns that are plus pratiques. 
More than once I had done this : and I might have done 
it again had not the Artist come to the Riviera. 

We were afoot (the best way to travel and see things)' 
on an April Sunday, and stopped for lunch at the restau- 
rant opposite the Cagnes railway station. The Artist 
was not hungry. While I ate he went out "to find what 
sort of a subject the ensemble of the city on the hill 
over there makes." He returned in time for cheese and 
fruit, with a sketch of Cagnes that made the waitress 
run inside to get better apples and bananas. She insisted 

[22] 



CAGNES 

that we v/ould be rewarded for a climb up to the old 
town, and offered to keep our coats and kits. 

Along the railway and tramway and motor-road a 
modern Cagnes of villas and hotels and pensions, with 
their accompaniment of shops and humbler habitations, 
has grown for a mile or more, and stretched out across 
the railway to the sea. Two famous French artists live 
here, and many Parisians and foreigners. There is also 
a wireless station. All this shuts off from the road the 
town on the hill. Unless you had seen it from the 
open country, before coming into the modem Cagnes, 
you would not have known that there was a hill and an 
old city. It was not easy for us to find the way. 

Built for legs and nothing else, the thoroughfare up 
through Cagnes is a street that can be called straight 
and steep and stiff, the adjectives coming to you without 
your seeking for alliteration, just as instinctively as 
you take off your hat and out your handkerchief. 

"No livery stable in this town — come five francs on 
it," said the Artist. 

"Against five francs that there are no men with a 
waistline exceeding forty-five inches!" I answered, feel- 
ingly and knowingly. 

But we soon became so fascinated by our transition 
from the twentieth century to the fifteenth that we for- 
got we were climbing. Effort is a matter of mental atti- 
tude. Nothing in the world is hard when you are inter- 
ested in doing it. 

Half wav and half an hour up, we paused to take our 
[23] 



RIVIERA TO^VNS 



bearings. The line of houses, each leaning on its next 
lower neighbor, was broken here by a high garden wall, 
from which creepers were overhanging the street, with 
their fresh spring tendrils waving and curling above our 
heads. There was an odor of honeysuckle and orange- 
blossoms, and the blood-red branch of a judas-tree 
pushed its way through the green and yellow. The 
canyon of the street, widening below us, ended in a rich 
meadowland, dotted with villas and trees. Beyond, the 
Mediterranean rose to the horizon. While the Artist 
was "taking it," the usual crowd gathered around : chil- 
dren whose lack of bashfulness indicated that many city 
people were here for the season or that tourists did find 
their way up to Cagnes; women eager to ask how the 
English felt about the war and how long we thought it 
was going to last; old men proud to tell you that their 
city was the most interesting, because the most ancient, 
on the Riviera. 

When we resumed our climb, the whole town seemed 
to be going our way. Sunday-best and prayer-books 
gave the reason. Just as we were coming to the top, 
our street made its first turn, a sharp one, and in the 
bend was a church tower with a wee door under it. 
Houses crowded closely around it. The tower was the 
only indication of the church. An abbe was standing 
by the door, calling in the acolytes and choir boys who 
were playing tag in the street. The Artist stopped short. 
I went up to the abbe, who by features and accent was 
evidently a Breton far from home. 
[24] 



1 




'Beyond, the Mediterranean rose to the horizon' 



CAGXES 

"Do any fat men live up here ?" I asked. 

"Only one," he answered promptly, with a hearty 
laugh. "The cure has gone to the war, and last month 
the bishop sent a man to help me who weighs over a 
hundred kilos. We have another church below in the 
new town, and there are services in both, morning and 
afternoon. Low mass here at six, and high masses there 
at eight and here at ten. Vespers here at three and there 
at four-thirty. On the second Sunday my coadjutor 
said he was going to leave at the end of the month. So, 
after next week, there will be no fat man. Unless you 
have come to Cagnes to stay?" The abbe twinkled and 
chuckled. 

"It is not to laugh at," broke in an oldest inhabitant 
who had overheard. "We live from ten to twenty years 
longer than the people of the plain, who have railways 
and tramways and carriages and autos right to their 
very doors. We get the mountain air from the Alps 
and the sea air from the Mediterranean uncontaminated. 
It blows into every house without passing through as 
much as a single neighbor's courtyard. But our long 
lease on life is due principally to having to climb this 
hill. Stiffness, rheumatism — we don't know what it 
means, and we stay fit right to the very end. Look at 
me. I was a grown man when people first began to 
know who Garibaldi was in Nice. We formed a corps 
of volunteers right here in this town when Mazzini's 
republic was proclaimed to go to defend Rome from 
the worst enemies of Italian unity, those Vatican — 
[25] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



But I beg M. le Cure's pardon! In those days of hot 
youth the church, you know, did not mean — " 

The ahhe twinkled and chuckled again, and patted the 
old man's shoulder affectionately. "When you did not 
follow Briand ten years ago, it proved that half a cen- 
tury had wrought a happy change. I understand any- 
way. I am a Breton that has taken root, as everyone 
here does, in this land of lofty mountains and deep 
valleys, of wind and sun, of sea and snow. Mental as 
well as physical acclimatization comes. The spirit, the 
life, the very soul of the Risorgimento had nothing 
Italian in it. It was of Piedmont and Savoy and the 
Riviera — a product of the Alpes Maritimes." 

I would have listened longer. But the bell above us 
began to ring, several peals first, and then single strokes, 
each more insistent than the last. The ahhe was still in 
the Garibaldi mood, and the volunteer of '49 and I were 
in sympathy. He knew it, and refused to hear the sum- 
mons to vespers. But out of the door came a girl who 
could break a spell of the past, because she was able 
to weave one of the present. She dominated us im- 
mediately. She would not have had to say a word. A 
h3nnn book was in her hand, opened at the page where 
she intended it to stay open. "This afternoon, M. 
I'Abbe, we shall sing this," she stated. 

"No, we cannot do it!" he protested rather feebly. 
"You see, the encyclical of the Holy Father enjoins the 
Gregorian, and I think the boys can sing it — " 

The organist interrupted : "You certainly know, M. 
[26] 



CAGNES 

I'Abbe, that we cannot have decent singing for the visits 
to the stations, unless the big girls, whom I have been 
training now for two months — " 

"But we must obey the Papal injunction, Mademoiselle 
Simone," put in the priest still more mildly. 

Mademoiselle Simone's eyes danced mockingly, and 
her moue confirmed beyond a doubt the revelation of 
clothes and accent. Here was a twentieth-century 
Parisienne in conflict with a reactionary rule of the 
church in a setting where turning back the hands of the 
clock would have seemed the natural thing to do. 

"Pure nonsense!" was her disrespectful answer. 
"With all the young men away, the one thing to do is 
to make the music go." 

I had to speak in order to be noticed. "So even in 
Cagnes the young girls know how to give orders to M. 
le Cure ? The Holy Father's encyclical — " I could stop 
without finishing the sentence, for I had succeeded. 
The dancing eyes and the moue now included me. 

"M. I'Abbe, it is time for the service," she said firmly. 
"If this Anglais comes in, he will see that I have reason." 

She disappeared. The abbe looked after her indul- 
gently, shrugged his shoulders, with the palms of his 
hands spread heavenward, and followed her. 

In the meantime the worshipers, practically all of 
them women and children, had been turning corners 
above and below. I made the round of the group of 
buildings, and saw only little doors here and there at 
different levels. There was no portal, no large main 
[27] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



entrance. When I came back to the bend of the road, 
the music had started. I was about to enter the tower 
door — Mademoiselle Simone's! — when I saw the Artist 
put up his pencil. The service would last for some time, 
so I joined him, and we continued to mount. 

Above the church tower, steps led to the very top of 
the hill, which was crowned by a chateau. Skirting its 
walls, we came to an open place. On the side of the 
hill looking towards the Alps, a spacious terrace had 
been built out far beyond the chateau wall. Along the 
parapet were a number of primitive tables and benches. 
The tiny cafe from which they were served was at the 
end of a group of nondescript buildings that had prob- 
ably grown up on a ruined bastion of the chateau. 
Seated at one of these tables, you see the Mediterranean 
from Nice to Antibes, with an occasional steamer and 
a frequent sailing-vessel, the Vintimille rapide (noting 
its speed by the white engine smoke), one tramway climb- 
ing by Villeneuve-Loubet towards Grasse and another 
by Saint-Paul-du-Var to Vence, and more than a semi- 
circle of the horizon lost in the Alps. 

The Sunday afternoon animation in the place was 
wholly masculine. No woman was visible except the 
white-coififed grandmother who served the drinks. The 
war was not the only cause of the necessity of Made- 
moiselle Simone's opposition to antiphonal Gregorian 
singing. I fear that the lack of male voices in the 
vesper service is a chronic one, and that Mademoiselle 
Simone's attempt to put life into the service would have 
[28] 



CAGNES 

been equally justifiable before the tragic period of la 
guerre. For the men of Cagnes were engrossed in the 
favorite sport of the Midi, jeu aux boules. I have never 
seen a more serious group of Tartarins. From Mon- 
sieur le Maire to cobbler and blacksmith, all were work- 
ing very hard. A little ball that could be covered in 
one's fist is thrown out on the common by the winner 
of the last game. The players line up, each with a 
handful of larger wooden balls about the size and weight 
of those that are used in croquet. You try to roll or 
throw your balls near the little one that serves as goal. 
Simple, you exclaim. Yes, but not so simple as golf. 
For the hazard of the ground is changed with each game. 
Interest in what people around you are doing is the 
most compelling interest in the world. Train yourself 
to be oblivious to your neighbor's actions and your 
neighbor's thoughts, on the ground that curiosity is the 
sign of the vulgarian and indifference the sign of the 
gentleman, and you succeed in making yourself colossally 
stupid. Here lies the weakest point in Anglo-Saxon 
culture. The players quickly won me from the view. 
Watch one man at play, and you can read his character. 
He is an open book before you. Watch a number of 
men at play, and you are shown the general masculine 
traits of human nature. Generosity, decision, alertness, 
deftness, energy, self-control — meanness, hesitation, 
slowness, awkwardness, laziness, impatience: you have 
these characteristics and all the shades between them. 
The humblest may have admirable and wholesome virtues 
[29] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



lacking in the highest, but a balance of them all weighs 
and marks one Monsieur le Maire or the stonebreaker 
on the road. 

The councils of Generals at Verdun were not taking 
more seriously today the problem of moving their men 
nearer the fortress than were these players the problem 
of rolling their big balls near the little ball. Had the 
older men been the only group, I should have got the 
idea that jeu aux boules is a game where the skill is all 
in cautious playing. But there were young chasseurs 
alpins, home on leave from the front, who were playing 
the game in an entirely different way. Instead of mak- 
ing each throw as if the destinies of the world were at 
stake, the soldiers played fast and vigorously, aiming 
rather to knock the opponent's ball away from a coveted 
position near the goal than to reach the goal. The 
older men's balls, to the number of a couple of dozen, 
clustered around the goal at the end of a round. Care- 
ful marking, by cane-lengths, shoe-lengths and handker- 
chief-lengths preceded agreement as to the winner. At 
the end of a round of the chasseurs alpins, two or three 
balls remained : the rest had gone wide of the mark, or 
had been knocked many feet from the original landing- 
place by a successor's throw. During half an hour I 
did not see the young men measure once. The winning 
throw was every time unmistakable. 

The Artist leaned against the chateau wall, putting it 
down. The thought of Mademoiselle Simone, playing 
the organ, came to me. How was the music going? I 
[30] 



CAGNES 



must not miss that service. The view and the chateau 
and the jeu aux houles no longer held me. Down the 
steps I went, and entered the first of the church doors. 
It was on the upper level, and took me into the gallery. 
I was surprised to find so large a church. One got no 
idea of its size from the outside. 

The daylight was all from above. Although only mid- 
afternoon, altar and chancel candles made a true vesper 
atmosphere, and the flickering wicks in the hanging 
lamps gave starlight. This is as it should be. The ap- 
peal of a ritualistic service is to the mystical in* one's 
nature. Jewels and embroideries, gold and silver, gor- 
geous robes, rich decorations, pomp and splendor repel 
in broad daylight; candles and lamps sputter futilely; 
incense nauseates : for the still small voice is stifled, and 
the kingdom is of this world. But in the twilight, what 
skeptic, what Puritan resists the call to worship of the 
Catholic ritual ? I had come in time for the intercessory 
visit to the stations of the cross. Priest and acolytes 
were following the crucifix from the chancel. Banners 
waved. Before each station prayers were said for the 
success of France and for the protection of her soldiers. 
While the procession was passing from station to station, 
the girls sang their hymn in French. For the first time 
since I had been in the Midi, I realized that the shadow 
under which we live in Paris was here, too. The 
trenches were not far away! 

When the service was over, I went around to the door 
under the tower. Of course, it was to meet the abhe. 
[31] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



Still, when I realize that I had missed the organist, I 
was disappointed. The abbe soon appeared from the 
sacristy. I gave one more look around for Mademoiselle 
Simone while he was explaining that he had just twenty 
minutes before it was necessary to start down to the 
other church, but that it was long enough to take me 
through the Moorish quarter. Although I had come to 
Cagnes to see the old town, and to get into the atmos- 
phere of past centuries, I must confess that I followed 
him regretfully. 

The houses of the Moorish quarter are built into the 
ancient city walls. Baked earth, mixed with straw and 
studded with cobblestones, has defied eight centuries. 
There are no streets wide enough for carts, for they 
hark back to the days when donkeys were common 
carriers. And in hill-towns the progressive knowledge 
of centuries has evolved no better means of transport. 
You pass through ruelles where outstretched hands can 
touch the houses on each side. Often the ruelle is like 
a tunnel, for the houses are built right over it on arches, 
and it is so dark that you cannot see in front of you. 
The abhe assured me that there were house doors all 
along as in any other passage. People must know by 
instinct where to turn in to their houses. 

When the abbe left me to go to his lower vesper ser- 
vice, after having piloted me back to the main streets, 
I decided to go up again to the place to rejoin the Artist. 
But under an old buttonwood tree, which almost poked 
its upper branches into the chateau windows, stood Made- 
[32] 








. .J' ^ ^> 



^l::^^- 



0i. 



"The houses of the Moorish quarter are built into the ancient 
city walls" 



^ CAGNES 

moiselle Simone, waving good-by to another girl who 
was disappearing around the corner of a street above. 
Her aunt, she declared, was waiting for her at a villa 
half-way down the hill, at five. Just then five struck in 
the clock-tower behind us. 

"Had you looked up before you spoke?" I asked. 

''Clocks do strike conveniently," she answered. 

Although Mademoiselle Simone repulsed firmly my 
plea that she become my guide through the other side 
of the town, where two outlying quarters, the abbe had 
said, contained the best of all in old houses, queer streets 
and an ivy-covered ruin of a chapel, she lingered to talk 
under the button wood tree of many things that had 
nothing to do with Cagnes. When I tried to persuade 
her to show me what I had not yet seen, on the ground 
that I had made the climb up to the top because of 
my interest in hill cities and wanted to write about 
Cagnes, she immediately answered that she would not 
detain me for the world and made a move to keep her 
rendezvous with the aunt. So I hastened to contradict 
myself, and assure her that I had no interest whatever 
in Cagnes, that I was stuck here waiting for the Artist, 
who would come only with the fading light. 

After Mademoiselle Simone left me under the button- 
wood tree, I thought of the Artist. He had finished 
and was smoking over a glass of vermouth at one of 
the tables by the parapet of the place. 

"Great town," he said. "Bully stuff here. In build- 
ings and villagers have you found anything as fascinat- 
[33] 



RIVIERA TOAVNS 



ing as that purple and red on the mountain snow over 
there? It just gets the last sun, the very last." 

"Yes," I answered, "but neither in a building or a 
villager of Cagnes. There is a Parisienne — " And I 
told him about Mademoiselle Simone. He was silent, 
and his fingers drummed upon the table, tipity-tap, tipity- 
tap. "Show me your sketches," I asked. 

"No," he said scathingly. "No ! You are not inter- 
ested in sketches. Nor should I have been, had you 
been more generous. You had the luck in Cagnes." 

The prospect of a trout dinner at Villeneuve-Loubet 
took us rapidly down the hill. We soon passed out 
of the fifteenth century into the twentieth. Modem 
Cagnes, with its clang of tramway gong, toot of loco- 
motive whistle, honk-honk of motor horn, cafe terraces 
crowded with Sunday afternooners, broad sidewalks and 
electric lights was another world. But it was our world 
— and Mademoiselle Simone's. That is why coming 
back into it from the hill of Cagnes was really like a 
cold shower. For a sense of refreshment followed im- 
mediately the shock — and stayed with us. 

The hill of Cagnes we could rave about enthusiastically 
because we did not have to go back there and live there. 
It will be "a precious memory," as tourists say, precisely 
because it is a memory. The bird in a cage is less of a 
prisoner than we city folk of the modern world. For 
when you open the cage door, the bird will fly away 
and not come back. We may fly away — ^but we do come 
back, and the sooner the better. We love our prisons. 
[34] 



CAGNES 

We are happy (or think we are, which is the same thing) 
in our chains. And in the brief time that we are a-wing, 
do we really love unusual sights and novel things? In 
exploring, is not our greatest joy and delight in finding 
something familiar, something we have already known, 
something we are used to? An appreciative lover and 
frequenter of grand opera once said to me, " *The Barber 
of Seville' is my favorite, because I know I am going to 
have the treat of 'The Suwanee River' or Annie Laurie' 
when I go to it." There is an honest confession, such 
as we must all make if we are to do our souls good. 

So you understand why there is so much of Made- 
moiselle Simone in my story of Cagnes, and why the 
Artist had a grouch. His afternoon's work should have 
pleased him, should have satisfied him. He would not 
have finished it had he met Mademoiselle Simone. He 
knows more of Cagnes than I do, but he would rather 
have known more of Mademoiselle Simone. 



[35] 



SAINT-PAUL-DU-VAR 



[37] 




CHAPTER III 
Saint-Paul-du-Var 

AT the restaurant opposite the Cagnes railway sta- 
tion the waitress welcomed us as old friends. 
She told us how lucky we were to come on a Friday. 
Fish just caught that morning — ^the best we would ever 
eat in our lives — were waiting for us in the kitchen. 
We flattered ourselves that the disappointment was 
mutual when we had to tell her that there was time only 
for an aperitif. Precisely because it was Friday and 
not Sunday, there was no reasonable hope of running 
into Monsieur le Cure or Mademoiselle Simone or a 
game of houles, if we climbed the steep hill to Cagnes. 
On our last visit, we had seen from the top of Cagnes 
a walled city crowning another hill several miles inland. 
Saint-Paul-du-Var was our goal today. 

Electric trams run to Grasse and to Vence from 
Cagnes. The lines separate at Villeneuve-Loubet, a mile 
back from the Nice-Cannes road. The Vence tram 
[39] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



would have taken us to Saint-Paul-du-Var along the 
road that began to avoid the valley after passing 
Villeneuve-Loubet. It was one of those routes na- 
tionales of which the France of motorists is so proud, 
hard and smooth and rounded to drain quickly, never 
allowing itself a rut or a steep grade or a sharp turn. 
This national highway was like all the easy paths in 
life. It meant the shortest distance comfortably pos- 
sible for obtaining your objective. It eliminated sur- 
prises, r It showed you all the time all there was to see, 
and kept you kilometrically informed of your progress. 
It was paralleled by the electric tram line. It enabled 
you to explore the country in true city fashion. 

We were walking, and the low road, signpostless, at- 
tracted us. It started off in the same general direction, 
but through the valley. It was all that a country road 
ought to be. It had honest ruts and unattached stones 
of various sizes. Cows had passed along that way. 
Trees met overhead irregularly, and bushes grew up in 
confusion on the sides. The ruthlessness of macadam, 
the pressure of fat tires, the scorching of engines, had 
not banished the thick grass which the country wants 
to give its roads, and would give to all its roads if the 
country were not being constantly "improved." There 
were places where one could rest without fear of sun 
and ditch-water and clouds of dust. Why should one 
go from the city to the country to breathe tar and gaso- 
line ? Why should one have to keep one's eyes wander- 
ing from far ahead to back over one's shoulder for 
[40] 



SAINT-PAUL-DU-VAR 



fifty-two weeks in the year? We wanted to get away 
from clang-clang and honk-honk and puff-puff. Since 
the real vacation is change, we welcomed the task of 
looking out for hostile dogs instead of swiftly moving 
vehicles. Our noses wanted whiffs of hay and pig, and 
our boots wanted unadulterated mud. 

We were not allowed to have our way without a 
warning. There always is someone to keep you in the 
straight and narrow path. As we were turning into 
the low road a passer-by remonstrated. 

"If you are going to Saint-Paul-du-Var," he explained, 
"you want to keep to the high road. It's very muddy 
down there, and will take you longer." 

When our adviser saw that we did not stop, he raised 
his voice and called, "There are no signposts and you 
may get lost." 

"You take the high road and we'll take the low," sang 
back the Artist. 

He who had meant well disappeared, shaking his head. 
No doubt, as he shuffled along, he was muttering to him- 
self over the inexplicable actions of ces droles d' Anglais. 

The miles passed coolly and pleasantly. Trees and 
bushes did not allow many glimpses of the outside world. 
The dogs that barked were behind farmhouse gates, 
and we had use for our stones only at an occasional 
jackrabbit. "At" is a convenient preposition. It gives 
one latitude. Jackrabbits on the Riviera are not like 
human products of the south. They jump quickly. 
They jump, too, in directions that cannot be foretold. 
[41] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



After one particularly bad throw, the Artist explained 
that he did not enjoy inflicting pain. His boyish in- 
stincts had long ago been controlled by reading S. P. 
C. A. literature. I told him that I thought he had given 
up baseball too early in life. So had I. The jack- 
rabbits escaped. 

I am rarely oblivious to the duty of the noon hour. 
Although I knew the Artist's habit of stopping suddenly, 
and the hopelessness of budging him by plea or argument 
as long as the reason for stopping remained, it had not 
occurred to me that there would be a risk in taking the 
low road. We had started in plenty of time, and as 
we were out for a medieval town, I thought he would 
not be tempted until we reached the vicinity of a restau- 
rant. But about a mile below Saint-Paul-du-Var the low 
road brought us to a view of the city that would have 
held me at any other time than twelve noon. I tried 
the old expedient of walking faster, and calling atten- 
tion to something in the distance. When the Artist 
halted, moved uncertainly a few yards, and stopped 
again, we were lost. He did not need to pronounce the 
inevitable words, "I'll just get this little bit." The 
Artist's "just" means anything from twenty to ninety 
minutes. 

Food without companionship is not enjoyable, least 
of all on a holiday. There was no use suggesting that 
we could come back this way, and advancing that the 
light would be so much better later. The Artist had 
started in. I cast around for some way of escape from 
[42] 



SAINT-PAUL-DU-VAR 



an impossible situation. The only farmhouse in sight 
was at the end of a long lane, and did not look as if 
it could produce the makings of a meal. The poorest 
providers and preparers of foodstuffs are their pro- 
ducers. Who has not eaten salt pork on a cattle ranch 
and longed for cream on a dairy farm? What city 
boarder has not discovered the woeful lack of connec- 
tion between the cackling of hens and the certitude of 
fresh eggs on the table at the next meal ? What muncher 
of Maine doughnuts in a Boston restaurant has not 
thought of the "sinkers" offered to him when he was 
on his last summer's vacation? 

A bridge crossed a stream just ahead of us. On the 
other side was a thick clump of trees. I walked for- 
ward with the thought that a drink of water at least 
might not be bad. When I got to the bridge I heard 
plaintive barking and a man's voice. The man was ex- 
plaining to the dog why he ought not to be impatient. 
He would have his good bone, with plenty of meat on it, 
in a little quarter of an hour. A house-wagon was 
standing back from the side of the road. The owner 
•was shaking a casserole over a fire, and the dog was 
sniffing as near as he dared. The dog gave me his at- 
tention, and the man turned. It was a favorite waiter 
of a favorite Montparnasse cafe. 

"Pierre," I cried, "where did you drop from? What 
luck!" 

Pierre put the casserole on the window ledge, out of 
the dog's reach, and greeted me. You never could sur- 
[43] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



prise Pierre. He was always master of the situation. 
One has to be in a Montparnasse cafe. I noted with ap- 
proval the precaution that Pierre had taken. Either the 
dog was very hungry or there was something particularly 
tempting in the casserole. 

Pierre had gone to join his regiment on the second 
day of the war. I had not seen him or heard of him 
for two years. He told me that he had been unable to 
shake off a hronchite, caught in the trenches. It was 
the old story. When he left the hospital, the medical 
board declared him unfit for further service and warned 
him against returning soon to city life. The hope of 
recovery lay in open air and sunshine. 

"I determined to get well, Monsieur," he said. "I 
had money saved up. I bought this wagon and a 
cinematograph outfit. I go to the little towns in the 
Midi. One can take only four sous — two from the chil- 
dren — but I get along. Now, when I am well, I shall 
not go back to Paris, Have you ever lived in a wagon. 
Monsieur? No? Well, never do it, if you do not want 
to realize that it is the only life worth living." 

Pierre was interested in the gossip of the Quarter. 
A frequent "c'est vrai" and "dites done" punctuated my 
news of American artists who had gone home at last. 
When I told him of the few who had sold pictures in 
America, his comment was "epatant," which he meant 
in no uncomplimentary sense. The Artist was an old 
favorite of Pierre's. 1 restrained his impulse to go 
right out to greet the Artist. Pierre entered into my 
[44] 













,>. Soffit -^^ • -z^ liaa-^.. "^^ * , 'js 







"The walls rose sheer, and only the outer houses, directly 
behind the ramparts, were in our line of vision" 



SAINT-PAUL-DU-VAR 



idea with alacrity. Xhe dog was given a bone and 
chained. The coal box was brought out from the wagon, 
and turned upside down for a table beside a fallen tree. 
When all was ready, I watched Pierre surprise the Artist. 
He put a napkin over his arm, and froze his face. Then 
he tip-toed up to the Artist's elbow, and announced, 
^'Monsieur est servi." For once I was able to get the 
Artist away from his work. 

What a meal we did have there beside that little 
stream! There were bottles in Pierre's wagon, and he 
insisted upon opening more than one. When we finally 
left Pierre to his dishes, we were well fortified for the 
climb to Saint-Paul-du-Var, and in the mopd to appre- 
ciate enthusiastically all that was before us. 

Above on the left we could see the high road that 
we had deserted at Villeneuve-Loubet. It did not come 
out of its way for Saint-Paul-du-Var, but went straight 
on inland Vence-wards. A side road, on the level, came 
over towards the gate of Saint-Paul-du-Var. To this 
road ours mounted, and joined it just outside the town. 
In climbing we had the opportunity, denied to the con- 
ventional, of seeing that Saint-Paul-du-Var was really 
on the top of a hill. The walls rose sheer, and only 
the outer houses, directly behind the ramparts, were in 
our line of vision. Nearly up to the entrance to the city 
we passed between a tiny stone chapel and a mill, whose 
wheel was a curious combination of metal and wood. 
The Artist exclaimed that it would make a bully sketch. 
He saw its picturesque possibilities. I wondered, on the 
[451 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



other hand, whether it would work and how it worked. 
Moss and grass on a millwheel in the Midi are no surer 
signs of abandonment and disuse than a dry millrace. 
Where things die fast they grow fast. A Httle water 
brings forth vegetable life in a single day. Southern 
streams are not perennial. On the Riviera, they are fed 
from nearby mountains, and are intermittent even in 
their season. When the water ceases, the sun quickly 
bakes a crust of silt and dries the stones of the river- 
beds gray-brown. 

A dwarf could hardly have said mass in the chapel. 
Its rear wall was the rising ground, and there seemed to 
be a garden on the roof. Burial space extending no 
farther than the roots of a sentinel cypress told the tale 
of one man's vanity or devotion. The situation of the 
chapel prompted us to look over the ground for traces 
of a lunette bastion on the counterscarp. We found 
that the chapel was built upon an earlier foundation of 
stone taken from a fortification wall, and that later 
builders had made over the chapel into a belvedere. 
Steps on the side of the slope led to the roof, upon which 
two benches had been placed. What past generations 
have left us we use for purposes of our own. We talk 
sentimentally of our traditions, but we test them by 
their utility. 

Saint-Paul-du-Var fails to satisfy twentieth-century 
standards. It is not a thriving, bustling city. It is not 
a tourist center. The walls are as they were five cen- 
turies ago. The space inside is sufficient for the popula- 
[46] 



SAINT-PAUL-DU-VAR 



tion, and one gate serves all needs. The medieval as- 
pect is not destroyed by buildings outside the walls, and 
the medieval atmosphere is undisturbed by hotel touts 
and postcard vendors. When we presented ourselves be- 
fore the gate, not a soul was in sight. A bronze cannon 
of Charles-Quint's time stuck its nose out of the ground 
by the portcullis. We had to pull off grass and dirt to 
find the inscription. While we were examining the 
towers that flanked the gate, a wagon rattled slowly by. 
The driver did not look at us. A woman with a basket 
of vegetables on her head met us under the arch. She 
did not look at us. We found the same indifference in 
the town. Even the small boys refrained from staring 
or grinning or yelling or asking for pennies. None 
volunteered to show us around. 

"The interest in our arrival at Saint-Paul-du-Var," 
commented the Artist, "is all on our side." 

Human nature is full of contradictions. We should 
have been annoyed if people had bothered us. We were 
as much annoyed when they paid no attention to us. 

We went up in one of the towers to reach the ram- 
parts. Keeping on the walls all the way around the town 
involved an occasional bit of climbing. We had to for- 
get our clothes. That was easy, however, for every step 
of the way was of compelling interest extra et intra 
muros. Outside, the panorama of the Riviera, sea and 
mountains, towns and valleys, lay before us to the four 
points of the compass. Inside, houses of different cen- 
turies but none post-Bourbon, each crowding its neighbor 
[47] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



but none without individuality of its own, faced us and 
curved with us. For once, the Artist failed to single 
out a subject. 

Seaward, beyond the valley through which we had 
come, were Villeneuve-Loubet and Cagnes. On the 
right we could see to the Antibes lighthouse, and on the 
left, across the Var, to the point between Nice and 
Villefranche, Landward were Vence and the wall of the 
Alpes Maritimes. The afternoon sun fell full on the 
snow and darkened the upper valleys of the numerous 
confluents of the Var and Loup rivers. 

Sketching was tomorrow's task. There was time only 
for exploration of the city before sunset. We came 
down at the tower opposite the one from which we had 
started on our round. On the road to the electric tram, 
we saw the restaurant-hotel, a cube of whitewash, but 
we were far from the temptation of banalities. Tea or 
something, and a place to spend the night, could be found 
within the walls. 

Saint-Paul-du-Var caught us in its fascinating maze. 
We forgot that we were thirsty. There was just one 
street. It zigzagged its way across the town from the 
gate. You lost the points of the compass and hardly 
realized that you were going over the top of a hill. 
The street curved every hundred yards, and frequently 
turned around three sides of a single building. Foun- 
tains were at the bends. One of them, opposite the 
market, fed a square pool that was the city laundry. 
[Women, kneeling on the edge, were at the eternal task. 
[48] 



SAINT-PAUL-DU-VAR 



We passed the centers of municipal life, post-office, 
mairie, gendarmerie, school and church. 

Churches of Riviera towns, like the character and 
speech and features of the people, are a reminder of the 
recency of the French occupation. There is a replica of 
the church of Saint-Paul-du-Var in a thousand Italian 
cities. When you enter the colorless building from the 
plain curved porch, the chill strikes right into your bones. 
Windows do not compete with candles. You have to 
grope your way toward the altar. Unless you strain 
your eyes, or lamps are burning, side chapels pass un- 
noticed. If you are looking for inscriptions or want to 
admire the old master's picture, with which every church 
claims to be endowed, you must get the verger with his 
taper. Altars are gaudily decorated and statues be- 
jeweled and be (artificial) flowered in Hispano-Italian 
fashion. The mairie, reconstructed from an ancient 
palace or castle, was more interesting. Beside the mairie 
a. medieval square tower, which may have been a donjon, 
was occupied on the ground floor by the gendarmerie. 
Bars on the upper windows indicated that it was still the 
prison. 

We tried the alleys that led off from the street, think- 
ing each might be a thoroughfare to take us back to the 
ramparts. They ended abruptly in a cul-de-sac or court. 
The culs-de-sac, uninviting to eye and nose, were as 
Italian as the church. The houses in the courts were 
stables downstairs. Man and beast lived together. 
Flowers and wee bushes grew up arotmd the wells in 
[49] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



the center of the courts. Everything was built of stone 
and red-tiled. But there was none of the dull gray-and- 
red monotony of northern towns near the sea or of the 
sharp gray-and-red monotony of towns of the Mediter- 
ranean peninsulas. Grass sprouted out between the 
stones of the walls and the tiles of the roofs. From 
window-ledges and eaves hung ferns. A blush of moss 
on the stones added to the green of plant life, and 
softened the austerity of the gray. Nature was success- 
ful in asserting herself against man and sun and sea. 

We were expressing our enthusiasm in a court where 
the living green combined with age to glorify the build- 
ings. We did not see the dilapidation, we did not smell 
the dirt, we did not feel the squalor. A woman was 
lighting a fire in a brazier on her doorstep. She looked 
hostilely at us. We beamed in counteraction. She 
looked more hostilely. As the Artist wanted to sketch 
her house, some words seemed necessary. I detailed 
our emotions. Was not her lot, cast in this picturesque 
spot, most enviable? 

"We want to take away with us," I said, "a tangible 
memory of this beautiful, this picturesque, this verdant 
court in which you live." 

"If you had to live here," she announced simply, 
"you'd want to go away and forget it." 

The fumes had burned from the charcoal. The 
woman picked up the brazier, carried it inside without 
another word or look, and slammed the door behind her 
with her foot. 

[50] 



V^.^:^-.-^-,- J 









r/- -i 



^v:''J4 



^ 






SAINT-PAUL-DU-VAR 



The Artist was already in his sketch, but he paused 
to growl and philosophize. "If she had waited a minute 
longer," he complained, "I should have had her and the 
brazier. Funny how unappreciative people are. You 
and I, mon vieux, would like nothing better than to stay 
here. From the other side of her house that woman 
must have a great view of the sea and the mountains. 
Is she going to watch the sunset? No, she is going to 
make soup for her man on that brazier in a dark hole 
of a room, and feel sorry for herself because she doesn't 
live in Paris where she could go to the movies every 
night." 

Our ardor for Saint-Paul-du-Var lasted splendidly 
through the sunset on the ramparts. We had found the 
ideal spot. Hoi polloi could have their Nice and their 
Cannes! But when night fell, there were few lights 
on the street, and shopkeepers looked at us in stupid 
amazement when we inquired about lodgings. We did 
not dare to ask in the drinking places, for fear they 
might volunteer to put us up. In the epiceries, we were 
offered bread and sardines. There was no butter. So 
we went rather less reluctantly than we had thought 
possible an hour earlier out of the gate towards the 
hotel-restaurant. An old man was camped against the 
wall in a wagon like Pierre's. He had been sharpening 
Saint-Paul-du-Var's scissors and knives. We confided 
in him, and asked if he thought the hotel-restaurant 
would give us a good dinner and a good bed. The 
scissors-grinder wrinkled his nose and twinkled his eyes. 
[51] 



RIVIEKA TOWNS 



"The last tram from Vence to Cagnes stops over there 
at eight-ten," he said decisively. "You have five minutes 
to catch it. Get off at Villeneuve-Loubet, and go to the 
Hotel Beau-Site. The proprietor is a cordon bleu of a 
chef. He has his own trout, and he knows just what 
tourists like to eat and drink. Motorists stop there over 
night, so you need have no fear." 

"But — " I started to remonstrate. 

The Artist was already hurrying in the direction of 
the tram. I followed him. 

The next morning the Artist went back to Saint-Paul- 
du-Var for his sketches. I did not accompany him. 
Saint-Paul-du-Var was a delightful memory, and I 
wanted to keep it. 



[52] 



VILLENEUVE-LOUBET 



[53] 




CHAPTER IV 



VILLENEUVE-LOUBET 



ON a hill a mile or so back from the Cannes-Nice 
road, just before one reaches Cagnes, a castle of 
unusual size and severity of outline rises above the trees 
of a park. The roads from Cagnes to Grasse and Vence 
bifurcate at the foot of the hill on v^hich the castle is 
built. What one thinks of the castle depends upon 
which road one takes. The traveler on the Vence road 
sees a pretentious entrance, constructed for automobiles, 
with a twentieth-century iron gate and a twentieth-cen- 
tury porter's lodge. The park looks well groomed. 
The wall along the Vence side is as new as the gate and 
the lodge. The stone of the castle is white and fresh. 
One dismisses the castle as an imitation or a wholesale 
restoration by an architect lacking in imagination and 
cleverness. But if the left hand road toward Grasse is 
taken, one sees twelfth-century fortifications coming 
[55] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



down from the top of the hill to the roadside. There 
are ruins of bastions and towers overgrown with bushes 
and ivy. Farther along an old town is revealed climb- 
ing the hill to the castle. There is nothing nouveau riche 
about Villeneuve-Loubet. The only touches of the 
modem are the motor road with kilometer stones, the 
iron bridge over the Loup, and the huge sign informing 
you that the hotel is near by. 

Had we limited our inland exploration to the Vence 
side of the hill, the Artist and I would not have dis- 
covered Villeneuve-Loubet. Had we been hurrying 
through toward Grasse in automobile or tram, we would 
probably have exclaimed "how picturesque" or "inter- 
esting, isn't it?" and continued our way. Luck saved 
us. 

A scissors-grinder at the gate of Saint-Paul-du-Var 
recommended the trout and beds of the Villeneuve- 
Loubet hotel. Just as the moon was coming up one 
April evening, we got off the Vence-Cagnes tram at the 
junction of the Grasse tramway, and walked to the reve- 
lation of what the castle really was. We decided to eat 
something in a hurry, and go around the town that very 
evening. 

When, helped by the sign, we reached the Hotel 
Beau-Site, the proprietor came forward with his best 
shuffle and bow. Trout? Of course there were trout, 
plenty of them. Alas, in these days of war, which meant 
scarcity of gasoline and bothersome sauf-conduits and 
suppression of express trains, there were too many trout. 
[56] 










^ f 







ic, II ?>■ 



•- 1-? ;■ 



SN^^Hr, 













*A castle of unusual size and severity of outline rises above the 
trees of a park" 



VILLENEUVE-LOUBET 



But that was to the advantage of messieurs. He, Jean 
Alphonse, could give a large choice, and the dinner would 
have all his attention. It was his pride and rule to give 
personal attention always to every dish that left his 
kitchen, but with the monde of a regular season, he 
could not take every fish out of the pan himself, and see 
that the slices of lemon were cut, and the parsley put, 
just as he had always done when he was the chef of 
Monsieur Blanc. We knew Monsieur Blanc. Monsieur 
Blanc died eight years ago, but that was the way of the 
world. Now messieurs could go right along with him 
and pick out their own fish. The net was down by the 
pool, and he would get a lamp in just one little minute. 
For that would be best. The moon was coming up, true. 
But one could not trust the moonlight in choosing fish. 

The garden of the Hotel Beau-Site contains a curious 
succession of bowers made by training bamboo trees for 
partitions and ceilings. As we went through them, Jean 
Alphonse explained that these natural salons particuliers, 
where parties could have luncheon out-of-doors and yet 
remain sheltered from the sun and in privacy, combined 
with the trout to give his hotel a wonderful vogue in 
tourist season. We, of course, insisted that the reputa- 
tion of the chef must be the third and controlling attrac- 
tion. The pool was full, and the trout had no chance. 
It was not a sporting proposition; but just before din- 
ner one does not think of that. Even our choice out of 
the net was gently guided by Jean Alphonse. Since hu- 
man nature is the same the world over, is it surprising 
[571 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



that the tricks calculated to captivate and deceive are 
the same? I recalled a famous restaurant in Moscow, 
where one goes to the fountain with a white-robed Tartar 
waiter and thinks he picks out his fish. I have no doubt 
that Jean Alphonse believed that his idea was original, 
and that we were experiencing a new sensation. 

Jean Alphonse did not boast idly of his cuisine. He 
possessed, too, the genius of the successful boniface for 
knowing what would please his guests. He sensed our 
lack of interest in the wines of the Midi, and, helped by 
the Artist's checked knickers and slender cane, set forth 
a bottle of old Scotch. We refused to allow him to open 
the dining-room for us, and had our dinner in a comer 
of the cafe. Villeneuve-Loubet's elite gathered to see us 
eat. The gar,de-champetre, the veteran of 1870, the 
chatelain's bailiff, the local representative in the Legion 
of Honor (rosette, not ribbon, if you please), and two 
chasseurs alpins, home from the Vosges front on sick 
leave, ordered their coffee or liqueur at other tables, but 
were glad to join us when we said the word. Soon we 
had a dozen around us. The history of the war — and 
past and future wars — and of Villeneuve-Loubet was 
set forth in detail. 

Had it not been for the moon, we should certainly have 
gone from the table to our rooms. But the full moon 
on the Riviera makes a more fascinating fairyland than 
one can find in dreams. We did not hesitate, when the 
last of our friends left, to follow them out-of-doors. 
Villeneuve-Loubet might prove to be a modest town to- 
[58] 



VILLENEUVE-LOUBET 



morrow, old, of course, and interesting: but we were 
going to see it tonight under the spell of the moon. We 
were going to wander where we willed, with all the town 
to ourselves. We were going to live for an hour in the 
Middle Ages. For if there was anything modern in 
Villeneuve-Loubet, the moonlight would hide it or gloss 
it over; if there was anything ancient, the moonlight 
would enable us to see it as we wanted to see it. I pity 
the limited souls who do not believe in moonshine, and 
use the word contemptuously. One is illogical who con- 
tends that moonshine gives a false idea of things ; for he 
is testing the moonshine impression by sunshine. It 
would be as illogical to say that sunshine gives a false 
idea of things on the ground that moonshine is the 
standard. If sunshine is reality, so is moonshine. The 
difference is that we are more accustomed to see things 
by sunlight than by moonlight. Our test of reality is 
familiarity, and of truth repetition. 

Villeneuve-Loubet is built against a cliff. The houses 
rise on tiers of stone terraces. They are made of stone 
quarried on the spot. Red tiles, the conspicuous feature 
of Mediterranean cities, are lacking in Villeneuve-Loubet. 
The roofs are slabs of stone. The streets are the sur- 
face of the cliff. We climbed toward the castle through 
a ghost-city. The moon enhanced the gray-whiteness 
that was the common color of ground, walls and roofs. 
The shadows, sharp and black, were needed to set forth 
the lines of the buildings. 

The picture called for a witch. The silence was 
[59] 



RIVIERA TOWIS^S 



broken by the tapping of a cane. Around the comer the 
witch hobbled into the scene, testing each step before her. 
She was dressed in black, of course, and bent over with 
just the curve of the back the Artist loves to give to his 
old women. She was a friendly soul, and did not seem 
amazed to find strangers strolling late at night in her 
town. We were "Anglais" and that was explanation 
enough to one who had seen three generations of tourists. 
She stopped to talk about the war. Did we think the 
Germans were going to be beaten this year, or were they 
strong, as in Soixante-dix? Were the English in earnest 
about their millions of soldiers, and would they raise an 
army like that of France? France could not carry the 
burden alone. Fifty-one had gone from Villeneuve- 
Loubet, and half were dead or prisoners in Germany. 
What was our impression of her country? We knew 
that she meant by "country" not France but Villeneuve- 
Loubet, and mustered our best vocabulary to admire the 
town, the solid foundations, the houses, the protecting 
castle, and above all, the unique streets of stone. 

"But it must be very difficult to go up and down in 
winter. How do you manage when the rock is frozen 
over with snow and ice ?" I asked. 

"It does not freeze here," she answered. 

The moon-whiteness had made me think of winter, and 
it had not occurred to me that there would be no snow 
and ice. Ideas are pervasive. We place them im- 
mediately and unquestioningly upon the hypothesis that 
happens to fit. 

[60] 



/'< 



' A. 




^ I: J i 






« 





'Villeneuve-Loubet is built against a cliff. The 
houses rise on tiers of stone terraces" 



VILLENEUVE-LOUBET 



The church, of eighteenth-century architecture, is the 
last building at the upper end of the town. It stands on 
a terrace outside the lower wall of the castle, an eloquent 
witness of the survival of feudal ideas. In order that 
the lord of the manor need not go far to mass, when 
there happened to be no private chaplain in the castle, 
the town- folk must climb to their devotions. I tried the 
church door from habit. It was not locked. The 
Artist refused to go in. 

"Why should one poke around a church, especially at 
night and this night?" he remonstrated, and walked over 
to the wall of the terrace. 

"There may be something inside," I urged. 

"There is something outside," he answered, with his 
back turned upon the castle as well as church. 

I could see my way around, for the windows of nave 
and transept were large, and had plain glass. Moonlight 
was sufficient to read inscriptions that set forth in detail 
the pedigree of the chatelains. The baptismal names 
overflowed a line, and were followed by a family name 
almost as long, MARCH-TRIPOLY DE PANISSE- 
PASSIS. Longest of all was the list of titles. The 
chatelains were marquesses and counts and knights of 
Malta and seigneurs of a dozen domains of the north- 
lands as well as of Provence. March-Tripoly and some 
of the seigneural names told the story that I have often 
read in church inscriptions near the sea in Italy, in 
Hungary, in Dalmatia and in Greece, as well as in 
Provence and Catalonia. The feudal families of the 
[6i] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



Mediterranean are of Teutonic and Scandinavian origin. 
They were founded by the stock that destroyed the 
Roman Empire, barbarians, stronger, more energetic, 
more resourceful, more resolute than the southerners 
whom they made their serfs. When feudalism, through 
the formation of larger political units by the extension 
of kingly rights, began to decline, the chatelains preserved 
their prestige by supporting the propaganda to redeem 
the Holy Sepulcher, They took the Cross and went to 
fight the Saracens in Africa and Asia. When climate 
rather than culture latinized them, later northmen came 
and dispossessed them. The men of the north have al- 
ways been fighting their way to the Mediterranean. Are 
Germans and Russians disturbing the peace of Europe 
any more or any differently than Northern Europeans 
have always done? Since the dawn of history, the 
Mediterranean races have had to contend with the men 
of the north seeking the sun. 

Behind the church, ruins of centuries, overgrown with 
shrubbery and ivy, cling to the side of the cliff from the 
castle to the valley road. The great square mass of the 
castle rises on top of a slope far above the church terrace. 
A moat, filled with bushes, is on a level with the terrace, 
and beyond the moat is a wall. An unkept path leads 
through the moat to a modest door. From the towers 
and arch above one can see that the former entrance to 
the castle, by means of a portcullis, was on this side. 
But the outer wall has been rebuilt, leaving only a ser- 
vants' door. Evidently the chatelain used to enter by 
[62] 



VILLENEUVE-LOUBET 



climbing up through Villeneuve-Loubet as we had done. 
Since the motor road was made on the other side of the 
hill, he and his guests can ignore Villeneuve-Loubet. 

The Artist was sitting on the wall of the terrace, en- 
grossed in midnight labor. He was willing to stop for 
a pipe. Above us the castle, dominated by a pentagonal 
tower, rose toward the moon. Below us, the blanched 
roofs of Villeneuve-Loubet slanted into the valley. As 
long as the pipe lasted, I was able to talk to the Artist 
about the men of the north seeking the sun. But when 
the bowl ceased to respond to matches, he said: "All 
very well, but I know one man of the north who is going 
to seek his bed." 

Before reaching the Hotel Beau-Site, however, a street 
on the left attracted us. It seemed to end in a flight of 
steps that dipped under arches, and we could hear the 
swift rush of water. We were not so sleepy as we 
thought, for both of us were still willing to explore. 
The steps led to the flour mill. We followed the mill- 
race until we reached the Grasse tram road near the 
river. By the tram station, a light was seining from 
the open door of a cafe in a wooden shanty. We went 
in, and found Villeneuve-Loubet's officer of the Legion 
of Honor smoking his pipe over a cup of tilleid. 

"There has been an accident in the gorge of the Loup," 
he said. "The last tram from Grasse was derailed, and 
two automobiles from Cagnes went up an hour ago. As 
I am the maire, I must wait for news. There may be 
something for me to do." 

[63] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



Monsieur le Maire told us that he had spent his hfe in 
the West African coast trade, with headquarters in 
Marseilles. If he had stayed there to end his days, he 
would have been one of a hundred thousand in a great 
city, cast aside and ignored by the new generation. But 
in his native pays he was in the thick of things. To re- 
turn to their old home is not wholly a question of senti- 
ment with Frenchmen who retire from business in the 
city or the colonies. Money goes farther, and one can 
be an official, with public duties and honors, and enjoy 
the privilege of writing on notepaper bearing the magic 
heading, Republique Frangaise. Monsieur le Maire told 
us that the chatelain came often, and never forgot to in- 
vite him to meet the guests at the castle. Some years ago 
I used to think that it was a peculiar characteristic of 
the French to enjoy being made much of and exercising 
authority. But since I have traveled in my own and 
many other countries I have come to realize that this 
characteristic is not peculiarly French. 

When Monsieur le Maire spoke of the chatelain, I had 
my opening. Full of the idea of the men of the north 
seeking the sun, I was ready to spread to others the im- 
pression I had made upon myself of my own erudition 
and cleverness. At the risk of boring the Artist, I re- 
peated and enlarged upon my deductions from the in- 
scription of the March-Tripoly de Panisse-Passis. Mon- 
sieur le Maire looked at me with malicious amazement. 

"La-la-la!" he cried. "Not so fast. You haven't got 
it right at all, at all, at all! The castle of Villeneuve- 
[64] 



VILLENEUVE-LOUEET 



Loubet is the only one in this comer of Provence that 
belongs to its pre-Revolutionary owners, but there are 
many centuries between feudal days and our time. 
Castles remain, but history changes. The March-Tripoly 
de Panisse-Passis are not a feudal family, and they do 
not come from the north. The African part of the name 
is due to an unproven claim of descent from a French 
consular official in Tripoli of the sixteenth century. The 
chateau, after a succession of proprietors, came to the 
Panisse family through marriage with the daughter of 
a Marseilles notary, who got the chateau by foreclosing 
a mortgage. During the Revolutionary period, the 
property was saved from confiscation by a clever straddle. 
The owner stayed in France, and supported the Revolu- 
tion, while the son emigrated with the Bourbons. The 
peerage was created just a hundred years ago by Louis 
XVIII, in reward for the refusal of the Panisses to fol- 
low Napoleon a second time after the return from Elba." 

Another pervasive idea! 

"The Moon got you," was the laughing comment of 
the Artist. 

Historical reminiscences died hard, however. We dis- 
cussed the possible Saracen origin of the pentagonal 
tower, and the vicissitudes of the castle during the 
struggles between Mohammedans and Christians, feudal 
lords and kings, Catholics and Protestants, Spaniards and 
French. Monsieur le Maire was a Bonapartist, and he 
insisted that the chief glory of Villeneuve-Loubet was the 
association with Napoleon. 

[65] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



"When Napoleon was living at Nice," he said, "he 
used to come out here often. Napoleon thought that the 
view of sea and mountains from Villeneuve-Loubet was 
the finest on the Riviera. He could stand up there and 
look out towards his native island, and contemplate the 
mountains the crossing of which was his first great step 
to fame. Napoleon (and here Monsieur le Maire winked 
at the Artist) was a man of the sun seeking the north — 
just like Caesar, ho ! ho !" 

The arrival of the tram, which had recovered its equi- 
librium, helped me to recover mine. We said good night 
to Monsieur le Maire, and before turning in went out on 
the iron bridge that spanned the Loup. 

The river, swollen by the spring thaw and rains, had 
overflowed its banks, and was swirling around willows 
and poplars. It was not deep, and the water flashed in 
the moonlight as it rippled over the stones. There was 
a smell of fresh-cut logs. We looked beyond a saw- 
mill into a gorge of pines that ended in a transversal 
white moimtain wall. 

"Bully placer ground!" I exclaimed. 

The Artist leaned over the bridge, looked down, and 
sighed just one word, "Salmon !" 

We sought the Hotel Beau-Site in silence. 

Monuments of men's making create a diversity of 
atmospheres and call forth a diversity of reminiscences. 
They cause imagination to run riot in history. But na- 
ture is the same the world over, and there would be re- 
actions and yearnings if one knew nothing of the past 
[66] 




J'y, 






VILLENEUVE-LOUBET 



from books. There is no conflict. Nature transcends. 
We dreamed that night not of crusaders, but of Idaho 
and the Bitter Root Range. 



[67] 



VENCE 



[69] 




CHAPTER V 
Vence 

THE most picturesque bit o£ mountain railway on 
the Riviera is the fourteen miles from Grasse to 
Vence. Yielding to a sudden impulse, we took it one 
afternoon. The train passed from Grasse through olive 
groves and fig orchards and over two viaducts. A third 
viaduct of eleven arches took us across the Loup. We 
were just at the season when the melting snows made a 
roaring torrent of what was most of the year a little 
stream lost in a wide gravel bed. The view up the gorge 
gave us the feeling of being in the heart of the moun- 
tains. And yet from the opposite windows of the train 
we could see the Mediterranean. Then we circled the 
little town of Tourettes at the foot of the Puy de Tour- 
ettes, with high cliffs in the background, and a wild 
luxurious growth of aloes below. We almost circled the 
village, crossing the ravines on either side on viaducts. 
A sixth long viaduct brought us to Vence. We had a 
rendezvous that evening at Cannes. There was no time 
to stop. We kept on to Nice to make the only connec- 
tion that would get us back to Cannes. 
[71] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



Afterwards the Artist and I spoke often of Vence. 
Twice we planned to go to Vence, but found the fascina- 
tion of Villeneuve-Loubet and Saint-Paul-du-Var justi- 
fiable deterrents. 

On the terrace of our favorite cafe in the Alices de la 
Liberte at Cannes on Easter evening we announced the 
intention of making a special trip to Vence the next day. 

"Tomorrow is Easter Monday, and the children have 
no school," said the Artist's hostess. "We shall make a 
family party of it, train to Cagnes where I may have a 
chance to see your Mademoiselle Simone, a trout 
luncheon at Villeneuve-Loubet with the rest of that bottle 
of which you boys spoke, and Vence in the afternoon." 

The orders had been given. There was an early 
morning stir at the Villa Etoile, a scramble to the 
Theoule railway station, and before nine o'clock we were 
all aboard for the hour's ride to Cagnes. When we got 
off the train, there was just one cocher available. He 
looked at papa and mamma and Uncle Lester and the four 
babies and their nurse, and raised his hands to heaven. 
But Villeneuve-Loubet was not far off and we were care- 
ful to say nothing of the afternoon's program. Leonie 
and the children were packed into the carriage. The rest 
of us followed afoot. 

Our cheerful host at Villeneuve-Loubet greeted us 
effusively. He had many holiday guests, but he remem- 
bered the Artist and me, and the splendid profit accruing 
from every drink out of the bottle only les Anglais called 
for. There were plenty of trout, fresh sliced cucumbers, 
[72] 



VENCE 



and a special soup for the kiddies. The cocher was so 
amenable to Leonie's charms and to drinks that cost less 
than ours that he consented to further exertion for his 
horse. But the climb to Vence was out of the question 
— a physical impossibility, he declared. And we, hav- 
ing seen the horse at rest and in action, could only 
sorrowfully agree. It was too much of a job to ma- 
neuver all the children (the baby could not walk) to the 
tramway halt, nearly a mile away, and on and off the 
cars. The mother said that she could not be a good 
sport to the point of abandoning all her handicaps for 
several hours in a place where the river flowed fast and 
deep. So it was agreed that she would have at least the 
excursion to Saint-Paul-du-Var, and the Artist and I, 
determined this time on Vence, would see her the next 
evening for dinner at Cannes. 

So we made our adieux, and hurried off to get the 
tram at the bifurcation below the castle. Half an hour 
later our tram passed the carriage jogging up the hill. 
As luck had it, we turned out just then on a switch to 
let the down car pass. The temptation of Vence was too 
much for Helen. The cocher seemed a fatherly sort of 
a man. There was a quick consultation from tram to 
carriage. A reunion with the handicaps was set for two 
hours later In front of the triple gate of Saint-Paul-du- 
Var, and another passenger got on the tram. 

Around a curve we waved farewell to our children. 
After all, Vence was only three miles beyond Saint-Paul. 
As we passed the Saint-Paul halt, our old friend, the 
[73] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



postman, was on the platform to receive the mailbag. 
We told him that the kiddies were coming, and slipped 
him ten francs to look after them until our return. 

"Soyez tranquilles, M'sieu-dame," he reassured us. 
"Moi, je suis grand' pere." 

Beyond Saint-Paul the tramway left the road and 
climbed over a viaduct to Vence. 

Ventium Caesaris was a military base of great impor- 
tance in the days of imperial Rome. It was the central 
commissariat depot for the armies in Gaul, and had a 
forum and temples. During the Middle Ages it was a 
stronghold of the Holy Roman Empire. It stands on 
the side of a fertile hill more than a thousand feet above 
the sea. The site was probably chosen because of the 
wall of rocks on the north which shelter it from the mis- 
tral, a wind that the Romans found as little to their lik- 
ing as later interlopers. In peace as in war the outside 
world has never been able to keep away from the Riviera. 

The Artist announced his intention of spending a 
couple of days sketching, and left us to seek a hotel. 
Helen and I found that there was no tram to Saint-Paul- 
du-Var that would enable us to pick up the children in 
time for the train to Theoule unless we returned without 
seeing Vence. So we decided to give an hour to the 
town and walk back to Saint-Paul. 

As at Grasse a boulevard runs along the line of the 

old fortifications. Some of the houses facing it have 

used the town wall for foundations or are themselves 

remnants of the wall. But at Vence the boulevard de 

[741 




g: ((■**'■'■ 






"Down the broad road of red shale past meadov^fs thick with violets" 



VENCE 



I'enceinte is circular — a modest Ringstrasse, marking 
without interruption the old town from the new. We 
dipped in and out of alleys under arches, and made a 
turn of the streets of the old town. Much of the 
medieval still survives in Vence, as in other hill towns 
of the Riviera. But only behind the cathedral did we 
find a remnant of imperial Rome. A granite column 
supporting an arch, and reliefs and inscriptions built in 
the north wall of the cathedral, are all that we saw of 
Vence's latinity. 

The cathedral, however, is the most interesting we 
found on the Riviera. It is a Romanesque building, 
built on the site of the second-century temple, and its 
tall battlemented tower harks back to a tenth-century 
chateau fort. The interior is striking: double aisles, 
simple nave with tiers of arches of the tenth century, a 
choir with richly carved oak stalls, a fourth-century 
sarcophagus for altar, and a font and lectern of the 
Italian Renaissance. 

It was just a glimpse. But sometimes glimpses make 
more vivid memories than longer acquaintance. At the 
end of our hour we left Vence and hurried down the 
broad road of red shale past meadows thick with violets. 
We went through the deep pine-filled ravine over which 
we had crossed on the viaduct. Jhen the climb to Saint- 
Paul-du-Var. 

We might have taken our time. Christine and Lloyd 
and Mimi came running to greet us, bringing with them 
little friends who had probably never before played with 
[75] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



children from Paris. We did not need to ask what kind 
of a time they had been having. Children are the true 
cosmopolitans. Hope lay under a tree on her blanket 
playing with her pink shoes. Nearby, at a table in front 
of the Cafe de la Porte, Leonie was treating the cocher 
and the postman to a glass of beer. 

"I got bread and honey and milk for the children's 
gouter" explained Leonie, "and Monsieur le cocher and 
I are having ours with Monsieur le facteur." 

As the children did not seem to be tired and the cocher 
was in no hurry, Helen and I made a tour of the walls, 
and took a photograph of our handicaps and their faith- 
ful attendants in front of the great gate built by 
Francis I, who prized Saint-Paul-du-Var as the best 
spot to guard the fords of the river against Charles V. 

A reader of this manuscript declares that the chapter 
on Vence ought to be struck out. 

"They [I suppose she means the home folks] will 
never understand," she insists. 

I am adamant. 

"When they come to the Riviera, they will under- 
stand," I answer. 

Between Saint-Raphael and Menton the most sacred 
responsibilities do not weigh one down all the time. 



[ye] 



MENTON 



[77] 




CHAPTER VI 



Menton 



IN architectural parlance the cornice is the horizontal 
molded projection crowning a building, especially 
the uppermost member of the entablature of an order, 
surmounting the frieze. The word is also used in moun- 
taineering to describe an overhanging mass of hardened 
snow at the edge of a precipice. In the Maritime Alps 
it has a striking figurative meaning. There are four 
corniches — the main roads along the two sections of the 
Riviera, Menton to Nice and Theoule to Saint-Raphael, 
where the mountains come right down to the sea and na- 
ture affords no natural routes. The Grande Corniche 
and the Petite Corniche run from Nice to Menton, and 
the Moyenne Corniche from Nice to Monte Carlo. The 
Corniche d'Or or Corniche de I'Esterel is the new road 
from Theoule to Saint-Raphael. The word is incor- 
rectly used, for the most part, concerning the two coast 
roads, the Petite Corniche and the Corniche I'Esterel. 
[79] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



For although these beautiful roads do at many points 
stand high above the sea, they descend as often as pos- 
sible to connect with the coast towns. But the analogy 
with the architectural term is perfect in so far as the 
Grande Corniche and the Moyenne Comiche are con- 
cerned. At every point these wonderful roads, undis- 
turbed by tramways and unbroken by towns (except La 
Turbie on the Grande Corniche and Eze on the Moyenne 
Comiche), you feel that you are traveling along a hori- 
zontal molded projection above temples built with hands 
and the activities of humankind. 

From Nice to the Italian frontier the railway, dart- 
ing in and out of tunnels, keeps near sea level. A small 
branch climbs from Monte Carlo to La Turbie. The 
tramway from Nice to Menton follows the Petite 
Corniche, with a branch to Saint-Jean on Cap Ferrat. 

For tourists, Nice is the center of the Riviera, the 
place to come back to every night after day excursions. 
Everything is so near that this is possible. Nice is the 
terminus of railways and tramways east and west. It is 
the home of the ubiquitous Cook. You can buy all sorts 
of excursion tickets, and by watching the bulletin posted 
in front of the Cook office on the Promenade des 
Anglais, it is possible to "cover" the Riviera in a fort- 
night. But this means a constant rush, perched on a 
high seat, crowded in with twenty others, on a char a 
bancs, and only a kaleidoscopic vision of Mediterranean 
blue, hillside and valley green and brown, roof-top red, 
wall gray and mountain white. At the end of your orgy, 
[80] 




^■M,r .',-. ^," 



^''\ 

^ r ^ 



n.l A 







1^- 



:^->. 



'Ancient Eze is on a lower hill midway between you and the 
Mediterranean" 



MENTON 



instead of distinct pictures, you carry away an impression 
of the Riviera in which the Place Massena is a concrete 
image and the rest no more than dancing bits of colored 
glass. Saint-Raphael and Menton are the luncheon 
breaks of two days, and the Grande Comiche is a beauti- 
ful vague mountain road over" which you whizzed. 

And yet there are those who go to the Riviera every 
year for a daily ride over the Grande Corniche, and who 
dream during ten months of two months at Menton ! 

Sitting with our legs daggling over the stone coping 
at the entrance of the port in Nice, the Artist and I 
figured out — on the basis of just time for a glimpse and 
a few sketches — how long it would take us to wander 
through the Riviera. Reserving March and April each 
year, we discovered that the allotted three score and ten, 
seeing that we had already come to half the span, would 
be inadequate. And there were other parts of the world ! 
So we decided to see what we could, eschew the "day 
excursions," draw on the memories of former years, and 
let it go at that. Grande Corniche and Moyenne 
Comiche would be explored afoot on sunny days and 
gray; shelter would be sought at Menton; and on the 
return to Nice, Monte Carlo and Villefranche would be 
the only tramway stops for us. 

To Ventimiglia, as if he foresaw what part of the 
Riviera would eventually fall to France, Napoleon I was 
the builder of La Grande Corniche. His engineers, plan- 
ning for horse-drawn vehicles in an age when time was 
not money, made the ascent easy by striking inland for 
[8i] 



RIVIERA TOTVNS 



several kilometers up from the valley of the Paillon and 
circling Mont Gros and Mont Vinaigrier. For the first 
two miles you have Nice and Cimiez below you. Then 
the road turns, passes the observatory of Bischoffsheim 
(who won posthumous fame by his having built the 
house where Wilson lost the battle of Paris in 19 19), 
and goes over the Col des Quatre Chemins. Here begins 
the matchless succession of views of the loveliest portion 
of the Riviera coast. Below you is the harbor of Ville- 
franche, between Montboron, which hides Nice, and Cap 
Ferrat jutting far into the sea with Cap de I'Hospice 
breaking out to the left. The sea is always on your right 
as you continue to climb. Ancient Eze is on a lower hill 
midway between you and the Mediterranean. If you 
have made an early start from Nice, La Turbie will come 
most conveniently in sight a little before noon. 

The only town of the Grande Corniche high up from 
the sea is on the line given in ancient maps as the frontier 
between Gaul and Italy, and it is evident that the Roman 
road followed here the route chosen by Napoleon. For 
here the Senate raised the trophaeum Augusti to com- 
memorate the subjugation of the Gauls and the new era 
of tranquillity from invasion for the Empire. On its site 
one of the most interesting medieval towers in southern 
France was the ruin par excellence of the Riviera until 
a few years ago. It is now "restored" so well that it 
leaves nothing to the imagination — a crime quite in 
keeping with the spirit of the new age of the "movies." 
Its architect wanted you to see at a glance just what it 
[82] 



MENTON 



used to be. You feel that he would have put arms on 
the Venus de Milo! As we stood there, a guide came 
up and began to tell us the history of the tower. We 
moved over to the terrace. From Montboron to Bor- 
dighera the Riviera lay below us, a panorama which com- 
manded silence. Up came the guide fellow, and started 
to name each place. 

"I am about to commit murder," I cried. 

"I'll save you the bother by telling him to chase him- 
self with this franc," said the Artist, pulling out the 
coin. "If only the restorer of the Tower of Augustus 
were around, he'd come in for a franc too." 

La Turbie is not a town to hurry away from after 
lunch. Its old gateways and leaning houses brought out 
the Artist's pencil. I tried to explore the paths up the 
Tete du Chien. Defense de penetrer — and then selec- 
tions from the Code about how spies are treated. The 
same fate met me on the Mont de la Bataille. France 
may love Italy just now — but she is taking no chances ! 
As far as I could judge, every high slope was fortified. 
I had tea at one of the hotels perched above the town, 
counted my money, and suggested to the Artist that we 
slip down to Monte Carlo for the night. 

The next morning we took the little railway back to 
La Turbie and continued our walk. From La Turbie 
the Grande Corniche makes a gradual descent behind the 
principality of Monaco to Cabbe-Roquebrune, and joins 
the Petite Corniche at Cap Martin. Three miles farther 
on the Promenade du Midi leads into Menton. This is 
[83] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



the most beautiful stretch of the Grande Comiche; and 
it is paralleled by no other road, as the new Moyenne 
Corniche ends at Monte Carlo. The view is before you 
as you go down. The vegetation becomes more tropical. 
You are nearer the sea, and the feeling of dolce far niente 
gets into your bones as you approach Cap Martin. 

Mont Agel's limestone side gives you back the heat of 
the sun. It is a radiator. No wonder lemons flower 
all the year round, and you discover on the same tree 
buds, flowers, green and yellow fruit. No wonder the 
palms are not out of their setting as at Cannes and Nice. 
Locusts, flourishing where there is seemingly no ground 
to take root in, live from the air, and give forth pods 
that almost hide the leaves in their profusion. The 
undergrowth of myrtle and dwarf ilex above becomes 
aloes and sarsaparilla and wild asparagus as we go down 
to the sea. We have left the cypresses and cork-trees, 
and eucalyptus struggles in our nostrils with orange and 
lemon. Even the ferns are scented! The Artist looks 
with apathetic eye on the rocks and ruined castle of 
Roquebrune. When we reach Menton we are willing 
to sink into cane-seated rockers on the Hotel Bristol 
porch, call for something in a tall glass with ice in it, 
and let the morning walk count for a day's journey. 

The tourists who know Menton only as a mid-day 
luncheon break have robbed themselves of an experience 
that no other Riviera town offers. The Promenade des 
Anglais at Nice is interesting in the sense that the Ave- 
nue des Champs-Elysees is interesting. The Mediter- 
[84] 



a- --Hom^-^ 




•La Turbie is not a town to hurry away from after lunch. Its 
leaning houses brought out the Artist's pencil" 



MENTON 



ranean is accidental — an unimportant accessory. The 
Promenade du Midi at Menton is another world. And 
this other world, with its other world climate, reveals it- 
self to you with increasingly keen delight, as you ride 
(you do not walk at Menton) around Cap Martin, up 
the mountain to old Sainte-Agnes, in the gorge of Saint- 
Louis, along the Boulevard du Caravan, and out to the 
Giardino Hanbury. You say giardino instead of jardin 
because Mortola is just across the Italian frontier. The 
eccentric Englishman chose this spot, without regard to 
political sovereignty present or future, as the best place 
to demonstrate the catholicity of the Riviera climate to 
tropical flora. I simply mention these drives; for you 
do not ride at Menton any more than you walk. The 
man who wants to keep his energy and work on the 
Riviera must not go farther east than Nice. 

But why another world? And another world even 
from that of the rest of the French Riviera? It is partly 
the climate and the consequent flora, but mostly the light. 
The general aridity of the Riviera, with the prevalence 
of everbrowns and evergreens, strikes unpleasantly at 
first the visitor from the North. Sunshine and riotous 
colors of flowers and blossoming trees do not make up 
for the absence of water-fed green. When it rains, the 
Northerner's depression cannot be fought off. The chill 
gets to his soul as well as to his bones. He prays for 
the sun he has come south to seek. But when the sun 
returns, the dust annoys him. The high wind gets on his 



[85] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



The casual tourist, whose stay is brief, even if he has 
come in the most favorable season, is "not so sure about 
the Riviera, you know." He is impatient with himself 
because, after the first vivid impression, panoramas and 
landscapes leave him unsatisfied. There is no compensa- 
tion for the absence of water-fed green in the canvas of 
nature until one becomes responsive to other colors. I 
do not mean particular patches of color in flowers and 
blossoms. These are of a season. Often they pass in 
a week. The sun that gives rich life kills quickly. The 
glory of south lands, especially along the sea, is the con- 
stant changing of colors. These colors you will drink in 
only when by familiarity you have become sensitive to 
lights and shadows. 

If you stay long enough at a place like Menton you 
will be ready for Southern Italy and Greece. You will 
be able to drink in the beauty of landscapes without 
foliage. And when you have acquired this sense, your 
own country will be a new world to you. Never again, 
as long as you live, will you tire of any landscape. 

The sun veils and unveils itself more often and more 
quickly and more unexpectedly at Menton than at any 
place on the Riviera. And the setting for watching the 
changes is perfect. Menton can say, in the words of 
the old sundial, 



"Son figlia del sole, 
Eppure son ombre." 

[86] 



MONTE CARLO 



[87] 







CHAPTER VII 
Monte Carlo 

SAN MARINO and Andorra have maintained their 
independence from the Middle Ages, but as re- 
pubHcs. The only reigning families who kept their 
domains from being engulfed in the evolution of modem 
Europe are those of Liechtenstein and Monaco. What 
will happen to Liechtenstein with the disappearance of 
the Hapsburg Empire is uncertain. Wedged in between 
the Vorarlberg portion of the Austrian Tyrol and 
Switzerland, Liechtenstein is almost as out of the way, as 
forgotten, as unimportant, as San Marino and Andorra. 
Monaco is in a different situation. The smallest country 
in the world covers only eight square miles, and never 
was very much larger than it is today. Until half a cen- 
tury ago Monaco was an Italian principality and not at 
all an anomaly. For Italy had been broken up into 
small political units from the Roman days. At the time 
[89] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



of the unification of Italy, the Italians had to part with 
a portion of the Riviera to France. Monaco lost a bit 
of her coast line — the Menton district — and became an 
enclave in France. 

Because of the traditional friendship of the Grimaldi 
family for France, the principality was saved from ex- 
tinction when the protectorate of Savoy (established by 
the Congress of Vienna) was withdrawn in 1861. In 
fact, the male line of the Grimaldi died out just after 
the War of Spanish Succession, and the present house 
is of French descent. But whether Grimaldi or Matig- 
non, the princes of Monaco have fought for a thousand 
years on the side of France against the British espe- 
cially, but also against the Italians, Spanish and Ger- 
mans. As unhesitatingly as his predecessors had always 
done, Prince Albert espoused the cause of France in 
1914; his son fought through the war in the French 
army. 

And there is another reason for the continued inde- 
pendence of Monaco. Republics have no sense of grat- 
itude. After the fall of Napoleon III Monaco would 
hardly have survived save for the gambling concession. 
Four years before the Franco-Prussian War, a casino 
and hotels built on the Roche des Spelugues had been 
named Monte Carlo in honor of the reigning prince. 
The concession, granted to a Frenchman, Francois 
Blanc, was too valuable to spoil by having Monaco come 
under French law! The Republic tolerated Monaco — 
on condition that no French officer in unifor^i and no 
[90] 



MONTE CARLO 



inhabitant of the Departement des Alpes-Maritimes 
(which surrounds Monaco) be allowed in the gaming 
rooms of the Casino. It was also agreed that except 
in petty cases handled in a magistrate's court all crimes 
should be judged by French law and the criminals de- 
livered for punishment to France. 

The arrangement is admirable from the French point 
of view. The Riviera has its gambling place of world- 
wide fame with no opprobrium or responsibility attach- 
ing to the French Government. The extra-territoriality 
does not extend to criminals. The inhabitants of the 
neighboring French towns are not demoralized by the 
opportunity to gamble. French army officers are pro- 
tected from corruption. It is presumed that the rest of 
the world, which can afford a trip to the principality, 
will be able to take care of its own morals! 

The Monegasques are similarly protected by their sov- 
ereign. They, too, are forbidden to gamble. They 
profit from the concession in that there are no taxes to 
pay in the rich little principality and in that several hun- 
dred thousand foreigners come every year to give big 
prices for every little service. But they run no risk of 
being caught by the snare they set for others. Prince 
and people, the Monegasques are like the wise old bar- 
tender, who said in a tone of virtuous self-satisfaction, 
**I never drink." 

When Tennyson, traveling along the Grande Corniche, 
saw Monaco, it was of the old medieval principality that 
he could write : 

[91] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



"How like a gem, beneath, the city 
Of little Monaco, basking, glow'd.'* 
The old walled town, on its promontory, must indeed 
have seemed a gem in an unsurpassed setting in the 
time of Tennyson. For the little Port of Hercules and 
the other promontory, Spelugues, were tree- and shrub- 
and flower-lined. There was nothing to break the spell 
of old Monaco. Now, alas, the Casino and hotels of 
Monte Carlo cover Spelugues, and between the prom- 
ontories La Condamine has sprung up, a town of red- 
roofed villas, larger than either Monaco or Monte Carlo 
and forming with them an unbroken mass of buildings. 
Monaco is simply an end of the city, distinct from the 
rest of the agglomeration only because it is high up and 
on a cape jutting out into the sea. 

Unless one went up to explore the old town, one would 
not realize that it was more than the palace with its 
garden and the post-Tennyson cathedral, too prominent 
for the good of the medieval spell. La Condamine and 
Monte Carlo have reached the limit of expansion. In 
front is the sea, behind the steep wall of the mountain. 
The principality is all city. But the mountains and sea 
prevent the exclusion of nature from the picture. De- 
spite the modern growth of Monaco, from the Grande 
Corniche the words of the poet still hold good. Mo- 
naco is no longer a predominantly medieval picture per- 
haps — but it is still a gem. 

The old town is as attractive in walls and buildings 
as other rock villages of the Riviera. Three main streets, 
[92] 



r,"\''t 






' V-^i4^«"'.v.Y?4-«*^j;^, 






-;i»i»i«ii»s<, , 







K'f-Ki 



'^h 




'The strength of Monaco is the weakness of the world' 



MONTE CARLO 



Rue Basse, Rue du Milieu and Rue des Briques, run 
parallel from the Place du Palais out on the promon- 
tory. They are crossed by the narrowest of city alleys, 
a I'ltalienne, and to the right of the Rue des Briques, 
around the Cathedral, is the rest of the town. Nowhere 
does the old town extend to the sea. 

On the sites of the ancient fortifications the present 
ruler, Prince Albert, has made gardens and built mu- 
seums for his collections of prehistoric man and of 
ocean life. One ought never to dip into museums. If 
you have lots and lots of time (I mean weeks, not hours), 
or if you have special interest in a definite field of study, 
museums may be profitable. But "doing" museums is 
the last word in tourist folly. Yes, I know that skele- 
tons and the cutest little fish are in those museums. I 
am not ashamed to confess that I never darkened their 
doors. Life is short, and while the Artist revels in his 
subjects, I find more interest in studying the living Mone- 
gasques than their — and our — negroid ancestors. 

For there is a separate race, with its own patois, in 
Monaco. You would never spot it in the somewhat 
Teutonic cosmopolitanism of the Condamine and Monte 
Carlo tradesmen and hotel servants. It is not apparent 
in the impassive croupiers of the Casino. But within a 
few hundred yards, in half a dozen streets and lanes, 
the physiognomy, the mentality, the language of the 
people make you realize that regarding Monaco as a 
separate country is not wholly a polite fiction to relieve 
the French Government of the responsibility for the 
[93] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



Casino. These people are different, children as well as 
grown-ups. They are neither French nor Italian, Pro- 
vencal nor Catalan, but as distinct as mountain Basques 
are from French and Spanish. It is not a racial group 
distinction, as with the Basques. In blood, the Mone- 
gasques are affiliated to their Provengal and Italian 
neighbors. 

What one sees in the old town of Monaco is a con- 
firmation of the assertion of many historians that na- 
tionality, in our modern political sense of the word, and 
patriotism, as a mass instinct shared by millions, are 
phenomena of the nineteenth century. Steam transpor- 
tation, obligatory primary education, universal military 
service, are the factors that have developed national con- 
sciousness, and the exigencies and opportunities and ad- 
vantages of the industrial era have furnished the motive 
for binding people together in great political organisms. 
Today if there were no outside interests working 
against the solidarity of human beings leading a common- 
wealth existence in the same country, the political or- 
ganism would soon make the race rather than the race 
the political organism. 

San Remo and Menton and Monaco are Riviera towns 
all within a few miles of each other. People of the 
same origin have three political allegiances. In half an 
hour your automobile will traverse the territories of 
three nations. Italians and French fight under differ- 
ent flags and were within an ace of being lined against 
each other in the war. Monegasques do not fight at 
[94] 



MONTE CARLO 



all. Taxes and tariff boundaries, schools and military 
obligations, make the differences between the three peo- 
ples. Put them all under the same dispensation and 
where would be your races? 

In the old days the raison d'etre of the principality was 
the power to prey upon commerce. From their fortress 
on the promontory the Grimaldi organized the Mone- 
gasques to levy tolls on passing ships. Italy was not a 
united country. France had not yet extended her fron- 
tiers to the Riviera. This little corner of the Mediter- 
ranean escaped the Juggernaut of developing political 
unity that crushed the life out of a dozen other feudal 
robber states. And when the logical moment for disap- 
pearance arrived, Monte Carlo saved Monaco. Another 
means of preying upon others was happily discovered. 
The Monegasques abandoned pistols and cutlasses for 
little rakes. The descendants of those who stood on the 
poops of ships now sit at the ends of green tables. The 
gold still pours in, however, and no law reaches those 
who take it. 

There is this difference: you no longer empty j'Our 
pockets to the Monegasques under compulsion, and the 
battlements of old Monaco play no part in your losses. 
The proverb dearest to American hearts says that a 
sucker is born every minute. It is incomplete, that 
proverb. It should be rounded out with the axiom that 
at some minute every person born is a sucker. 

So I look over to the great white building which is the 
salvation of the Monegasques — their symbol of freedom 
[95] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



from taxes and military service — and know that the 
strength of Monaco is the weakness of the world. I re- 
turn to the Place du Palais. The Artist is reluctantly- 
strapping up his tools. We glance for a brief moment 
at the best sunset view on the Riviera. Ships sail by un- 
molested. No more have they fear of the Tete du Chien 
and of the huge stone boulet that Fort Antoine used to 
lance if a merchantman dared to be deaf to the call of 
the galley darting forth from the Port of Hercules. But 
we? 

The Artist's fingers are nimble with the buckle after a 
day with the pencil. Pipe is filled from pouch with an 
inimitably deft movement of one hand. Reluctant is 
generally the right word to use when I speak of the Artist 
leaving his work. I am not so sure now. As I hope, he 
does not suggest a west-bound tram at the foot of the 
Palais or the 6 140 train ; he says, 

"If we alternate eighteen and thirty-six this evening, 
putting by half each time we win — " 

"Like that English old maid we saw last week," I 
interrupted, "who doubled just once instead of splitting. 
I can see the drop of the jaw now. Even without the 
false teeth, it would have been hideous." 

"On the red then as long as we last," conceded the 
Artist, who knew my horror of complicated figure 
systems, "and there's the sign." 

He pointed to the red fringe that lit up fading Cap 
Martin. 

"H we do not get over soon," I answered, "black will 
[96] 



MONTE CARLO 



be the latest tip of nature." The Riviera towns under 
the lee of mountains do not have a lingering twilight. 

But when we had finished dinner an affiche announcing 
A'ida turned us from the Salles de Jeu to the Salle du 
Theatre. To most people gambling is a pastime not 
taken seriously. Only when it is a passion does one find 
in it the exclusive attraction of Monte Carlo. This is 
proved by the excellence of Monte Carlo opera. No 
metropolis boasts of a better orchestra and chorus; and 
the most famous singers are always eager to appear at 
Monte Carlo. 

After Paris, where the war had affected vitally the 
quality and variety of our music, it was an evening of 
deep enjoyment. And we had more than just enough 
put aside for car fare when we bought our tickets for 
Nice. 



[97] 



yiLLEFRANCHE 



[99] 




CHAPTER VIII 

ViLLEFRANCHE 

DURING the heat of the war, shortly after the 
intervention of the United States, I wrote a maga- 
zine article setting forth for American readers the claims 
of France to Alsace-Lorraine and trying to explain why 
the French felt as they did about Alsace-Lorraine. Of 
course I spoke of Strasbourg and Mulhouse ; but a copy- 
reader, faithfully making all spellings conform to the 
Century Dictionary, changed my MS. reading to Strass- 
burg and Mulhaiisen. Can you imagine my horror when 
I saw those awful German names staring out at me under 
my own signature — and in an article espousing the side 
of France in the Alsace-Lorraine controversy ? Perhaps 
not — unless you understand the feeling of the actual 
possessor and the aspirant to possession of border and 
other moot territories. "By their spelling ye shall know 
them !" is their cry. Later, I happened to be in America 

[lOl] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



when that dear good faithful copy-reader changed my 
Bizerte to the dictionary's Bizerta in an article on Tunis, 
and was able to go to the mat with him. I explained 
that the spelling was an essential part of the political 
tenor of the article. 

All this I repeated to the wife and critic combined in 
one delightful but Ulster-minded person who insisted 
that in English Menton must be spelled Mentone. 

"You write Marseilles instead of Marseille and put the 
V on Lyon too: I've seen you do it!" she cried. "And 
the French call London Londres !" 

"But those cities happen not to be in terre irredente" 
I explained. "Menton lies too near the Italian frontier 
for a friend of France to call it Mentone, whatever the 
English usage may be. If we retain Mentone, why have 
we abandoned Nizza for Nice, Eza for Eze, Roccabruna 
for Roquebrune, Monte Calvo for Mont Chauve, Testa 
del Can for Tete du Chien, Villa Franca for Ville- 
franche?" 

"Since you have at last arrived at Villefranche, you 
had better start your chapter," was her woman's answer. 

You may have a confused picture, you may even for- 
get many places you have visited in your travels, but 
Villefranche? Never! Whether you have first seen 
Villefranche as you came around the comer of Mont- 
boron from Nice or across the neck of Cap Ferrat from 
Beaulieu on the Petite Corniche, as you came through the 
Col des Quatre Chemins on the Grande Corniche, or as 
you climbed up behind Fort Montalban on the Moyenne 

[ 102 ] 






m- 










'Medieval streets and buildings have almost 
disappeared" 



VILLEFRANCHE 



Corniche, the memory is equally indelible. But each 
corniche gives a different impression of the only natural 
harbor on the Riviera. The Petite Corniche, v^hich 
mounts rather high around Montboron, is the near view. 
You see only the rode with Cap Ferrat as a background. 
Approaching in the opposite direction, Montboron is the 
background. On the Moyenne Corniche the rode comes 
gradually into your field of vision. You are way above 
the sea, but the harbor still forms the principal part of 
the water foreground in the picture. On the Grande 
Corniche, where the Riviera coast from Cap d'Antibes 
to Cap Martin is before you, and the Mediterranean rises 
to meet the sky, every outstanding feature of the picture 
is a cape or town, fortification or lighthouse, except at 
Villefranche. Here the land is the setting. The water 
of the harbor, changing as you look to green and back 
to blue until you are not sure which is the color, is the 
feature that attracts and holds you. Montboron, the 
littoral and Cap Ferrat are as secondary as the prongs 
and ring which hold a precious stone. 

The water edge of the harbor has become conven- 
tionalized to a large extent by the artificial stone wall 
built at the inner end and part-way along the Montboron 
slope, to make possible railway and carriage road, and 
by the quays and breakwaters. But enough of the unim- 
proved line remains to indicate how the harbor must 
have looked before the masons got to work. The rocks 
of Villefranche are copper with streaks of brown-gray 
that change in depth of color as the sunlight changes in 
[103] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



intensity. Water and rocks are not afraid to compete 
with flowers and trees and mountain shades for the 
Artist's attention. Villefranche as a maritime picture 
wins. And yet foliage and flora are no mean rivals. 
Turning the point of Montboron from Nice has brought 
you from the climate where many southland growths 
are exotic to the beginning of the tropical portion of the 
Riviera which extends into Italy, with Menton and 
Bordighera as its most typical spots. 

Villefranche comes close after Menton — and ahead of 
Beaulieu and Monte Carlo and Condamine — in the claim 
to a perennial touch of the south. From Montboron to 
the hills east of Oneglia the mountain wall protects from 
the north wind and radiates the sun. But there is no 
deep harbor like that of Villefranche : and no other place 
has a Cap Martin to form a windshield from strong sea 
breezes. 

Climate as much as the safe anchorage attracted pirates. 
From the Caliph Omar to the last of the Deys of Algiers, 
Mohammedan corsairs swept the Mediterranean. Be- 
cause the Maritime Alps deprived the inhabitants of the 
Riviera of retreat to or succor from the hinterland, this 
coast was the joy of Saracens and Moors, Berbers and 
Turks. It is hard to believe that up to a hundred years 
ago the Riverains — the inhabitants of all the Mediter- 
ranean littoral, in fact, from Gibraltar to Messina — were 
constantly in danger of corsair raids just as our Ameri- 
can pioneer ancestors were of Indian raids. The lay of 
the land and the lack of a powerful suzerain state to de- 
[104] 



VILLEFRANCHE 



fend them made the Riverains facile prey. Villefranche 
afforded the easiest landing. Try to climb up from 
Villefranche over crags and through stone-paved and 
rock-lined ravines to the Moyenne Corniche, and then 
on to the higher mountain-slopes, and you can imagine 
how difficult it was to get away from raiders, and why 
the Barbary pirates took a full bag of luckless Riverains 
on every raid. You comprehend the raison d'etre of the 
fortified hill towns, and Eze, perched on her cliff, has 
a new meaning as you look down on Villefranche. This 
fastness was held by the Saracens long after the crescent 
yielded elsewhere to the cross — and then became a fre- 
quent refuge for the descendants of the victors in the 
medieval struggle. 

From the moment the French entered Algiers at the 
beginning of the July Monarchy, they felt that their 
claim to the gratitude of the Riverains justified the an- 
nexation of a portion of the Riviera. The treaty that 
extended French sovereignty to beyond Menton was 
signed at Villefranche, and immediately the little harbor 
was transformed into a French naval port. Until war- 
ships became floating fortresses Villefranche was useful 
to France. Now it sees only torpedo-boats and de- 
stroyers, and the lack of direct communication with the 
interior has prevented its commercial development. 
Better an artificial breakwater with no Alps behind than 
a natural harbor with a Cap Ferrat, 

Occasionally a huge ocean liner, chartered by an 
American tourist agency for an Eastern Mediterranean 
[ 105 ] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



tour, drops into Villefranche roadstead. These chance 
visits, to give the tourists a day at Nice and Monte Carlo, 
demonstrate that Villefranche could be a port of call for 
the leviathans, commercial and naval, of the twentieth 
century. How much easier it would be to go to the 
Riviera directly from London and New York, instead of 
having a wearisome train journey added to the ocean 
voyage! But freights pay a large part of passenger 
rates, and the routing from great port to great port is as 
rigid and unalterable as the fact that a straight line is 
not the shortest distance between two points on land. 
Trains and ships must pass by way of great centers of 
population. 

A naval cemetery is the memorial of Villefranche' s 
naval past in the last brilliant decade of the Second 
Empire and the early years of the Third Republic. A 
little American comer, which our Paris Memorial Day 
Committee never forgets, bears witness to the period 
when the American flag was known everywhere in the 
Mediterranean. We used to have the lion's share of the 
carrying trade, and Villefranche was a frequent port of 
call for American warships. Now we have rarely even 
single warships or freighters in the Mediterranean. The 
only American passenger line that serves Mediterranean 
ports is the old Turkish Hadji Daoud Line of five small 
and dirty Levantine ships, which ply along the coast of 
Asia Minor and in and out of the Greek islands, camou- 
flaged under our flag. 

The old town of Villefranche is on the western side of 
[io6] 



VILLEFRANCHE 



the harbor between the Petite Comiche and the water. 
Like all Riviera towns on a main road it has grown 
rapidly and medieval streets and buildings have almost 
disappeared, giving way to the banal architecture of the 
end of the nineteenth century. The garish brick villas 
of the head of the gulf are excrescences in their lovely 
garden setting. But after one has reached the eastern 
side of the harbor and gone through Pont Saint Jean, the 
tramway road, with its noise and dust and variegated 
bourgeois fantasies, can be abandoned. 

If we except Cap Martin, no Riviera walks are lovelier 
than those of Cap Ferrat. On the Villefranche side, 
until you have passed through Saint Jean, the alternative 
to the tramway road is an inhospitable though tantalizing 
lane. For large estates, shut off by walls and hedges, 
are between you and the harbor. Unless you are lucky 
enough to know one of the owners, you will not see the 
harbor of Villefranche from the best of the lower 
vantage points. This side of Villefranche is so sheltered 
that one resident, an American, has been able to trans- 
form his garden into a bit of old Japan where the cherry 
trees blossom in Nippon profusion and colors. 

It is best to pass across the cape, not turning in at 
the tramway bifurcation, until you reach the Promenade 
Maurice-Rouvier, which skirts the Anse des Fourmis 
along the sea from Beaulieu to Saint Jean. After you 
have reached Saint Jean the peninsula is before you. A 
maze of superb roads tempt you, circling the fort several 
hundred feet above sea level, crossing the peninsula on 
[ 107 ] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



the slopes of the fort, and following the sea. Return- 
ing to Saint Jean, there is still another walk directly- 
ahead of you to the east. The Cap du Saint Hospice 
is pine-clad, with a sixteenth-century tower at its end. 

The Artist and I made a mistake of twelve hours in 
our visit to Saint Hospice. We should have come in 
the morning for the sunrise. To remedy the error we 
decided to spend the night at the Hotel du Pare Saint 
Jean. But the sun got up long before we did. 

"Our usual luck," said the Artist with a grin that had 
nothing of regret in it. 



[io8] 



NICE 



[109] 




CHAPTER IX 



Nice 



UNLESS the traveler has some special reason for 
starting at another point, he first becomes ac- 
quainted with the Riviera at Nice, and radiates from 
Nice in his exploration of the coast and hinterland. The 
Artist confessed to me that in student days the Riviera 
meant Nice to him, with the inevitable visit to lay a gold 
piece on the table at Monte Carlo. And it was Nice of 
the Carnival and Mardi-Gras. I in turn made a similar 
avowal. We knew well the Promenade des Anglais, the 
Casino and the Jardin Public opposite, the Place Massena 
beyond the garden, v/here you take a tram or a char a 
banc to almost anywhere, and the Avenue de la Gare. 
The Artist had the advantage of me in his intimate 
sketching knowledge of the old Italian city back from the 
Quai du Midi, while I knew better than he the Avenue 
de la Gare. How many times have I pushed a baby 
[III] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



carriage up and down that street while my wife shopped ! 

Nice was to us a resort, cosmopolitan like other 
famous playgrounds of the world, and where one strictly 
on pleasure bent had the same kind of a time he would 
have at Aix-les-Bains or Deauville, Wiesbaden or 
Ostend, Brighton or Atlantic City. You strolled among 
crowds, you bought things you did not want, you could 
not get away from music, you danced and went to the 
theater or opera, and you spent much too much of your 
time in hotels and restaurants. If you went on ex- 
cursions, you enjoyed them, of course. But you always 
hurried back to Nice in order not to miss doing some- 
thing of exactly the same kind that you could have done 
any day in the place you came from. 

You have to give Nice time, and get out of your rut, 
before you awaken to its unique characteristics. Then, 
if you detach yourself from the amusement-seekers, the 
time-killers, the apathetic, the bored, the blase and the 
conscientious tourists, you begin to realize that the 
metropolis of the Riviera (including its suburbs and 
Monte Carlo) is a world in itself — an inexhaustible 
reservoir for exploration and reflection. Because it is 
the only place in Europe where Americans (North and 
South) can honestly say that they feel at home, because 
it was made for and by everybody and caters to every- 
body, Nice stands the test of cosmopolitanism. Every 
great capital and every seaport at the cross-roads of 
world trade is cosmopolitan, but in a narrower sense than 
Nice. Capitals and seaports have the general character, 

[112] 




"Italian in blood and culture and 



instincts" 



NICE 



in the last analysis the atmosphere, of the country they 
administer and serve. None has the sans patrie stamp 
of Nice. If Edward Everett Hale had allowed his hero 
to go to Nice, the man without a country would not have 
felt alone in the world. 

I was on the Suez Canal when the Germans heralded 
the Verdun offensive. I hurried back to France, and 
spent a couple of days with my wife at Nice before go- 
ing on to the front. They were, perhaps, the most 
critical days of the war, when one watched the com- 
munique with the same intensity as one tried to read hope 
into serious bulletins from a loved one's bedside. After 
leaving Nice, I discovered that the pall of death did hang 
over France. But in Nice there seemed to be no mass 
instinct of national danger, no sickening anxiety. On 
the Avenue de la Gare I noticed hundreds pass by the 
newspaper bulletins without displaying enough interest 
to stop and read. 

Two years later, at another critical moment when the 
Germans were once more closing in on Paris and bom- 
barding the city with the long-distance cannon, I spoke 
at the Eldorado. The meeting, organized by the Prefet 
and Maire, drew a large and sympathetic audience. 
Among residents and visitors are to be found thousands 
of intense patriots. But when I left the theater and 
walked back to my hotel, I realized that Nice in 191 8 
was like Nice in 191 6. The population as a whole, 
inhabitants and guests, had no French national con- 
sciousness. When I delivered the same message in the 
[113] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



municipal casino of Grasse the next day, I knew that 
I was again in France, Frenchmen themselves attribute 
the lack of war spirit in Nice to the general indifference 
and lesser patriotism of the Midi ! But this is because 
Nice means the Midi to most of them. They are unfair 
to the Midi. In no way does Nice represent the Midi 
of France except that it basks in the same sun. 

The common explanation of the failure of France to 
assimilate Nice is that only sixty years have passed since 
the annexation and that a large portion of the Ni9ois 
are Italian in blood and culture and instincts. There 
may be some truth in all this. But two generations is 
a long time, and France has proved her ability to make 
six decades count in attaching to herself and stamping in 
her image other border populations. Two factors have 
worked against the assimilation of Nice : the maintenance 
of the independence of Monaco, with privileges and no 
responsibilities for its inhabitants; and the enormous 
number of foreign residents, who have lost their attach- 
ment to their own countries and who do not care to 
give or are incapable of giving allegiance to the country 
in which they live. Add to these demoralizing influences, 
at work throughout the sixty years, the flood of tourists 
and temporary residents of all nations; and is it to be 
wondered at that the Ni^ois, native and alien, have so 
little in common with France? 

When you stroll along the Promenade des Anglais, 
with its hotels and palm-surrounded villas, the Mediter- 
ranean coast line extending alluringly from the distant 
[114] 



NICE 



lighthouse of Antibes in the west to the Chateau, set in 
green, in the foreground to the east, you feel that you are 
in one of the fairy spots of the earth. The sea, the city 
climbing up the hill to Cimiez, the white-capped moun- 
tains beyond, and on the handsome promenade the best- 
gowned of Europe, all in the brilliant sunshine of a soft 
spring day — what could be more charming? And then, 
suddenly, your unwilling nostrils breathe in a strong 
whiff of sewage. Have you been mistaken? Surely 
you are dreaming. The Casino dances on the water. A 
bevy of girls come out of the Hotel Ruhl to join the 
Lenten noon-day throng. Nothing disagreeable like 
sewage — but there it is again ! Whew ! Where can that 
sewer empty? Fault of French engineering, an Ameri- 
can would say. 

But the sea has brought me that smell on the board- 
walk in front of the Traymore at Atlantic City. It is 
difficult to get ahead of nature, and the undertow does 
bring back what you thought you were rid of. 

Figuratively speaking, the surprise on the Promenade 
des Anglais meets you every day in your study of Nice. 
The city charms: and it repels. You have been drink- 
ing in its beauty and its fascination. Suddenly some- 
thing sordid, ugly, disgusting, breaks the spell. On the 
Promenade des Anglais sewage greets the eye as well as 
the nose. Not vicious women and poor little dolls alone, 
but cruel and weak faces, shifty and vapid faces, self- 
centered and morose faces, leech faces, pig faces, of well- 
tailored men — ^you watch them pass, you remember what 
[115] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



you have seen at the tables in near-by Monte Carlo, and 
the utter depravity of your race frightens you. Except 
clothes and jewels and the ability to get a check cashed, 
what is the difference between these people and the 
sailors from a hundred ships, making merry with their 
girls in the narrow streets back from the Vieux Port of 
Marseilles ? 

The law of compensation often comforts and cheers. 
But as often it is remorseless. Broken health and empty 
purses, desperation, mute suffering and madness, we saw 
at Monte Carlo. Where the world flocks for pleasure, 
agony of soul reveals itself more readily than elsewhere 
because of its incongruity. Nice is full of tragedy, and 
none takes the pains to conceal it as at Monte Carlo. 
The casual visitor creates his own atmosphere in Nice, 
and he goes away with the most pleasant memory, having 
found what he sought. But you cannot stroll day after 
day on the Promenade without marking many that do 
not smile. You watch them and you see unhappiness, 
unrest, despair, and resignation. If you become ac- 
quainted with the life and gossip of the various colonies, 
you will not need a Victor Marguerite to reveal to you 
the inner life of the world's "playground." More fre- 
quently than not it is a case of on with the dance. What 
a price people do pay to play ! 

Just one illustration. The Russians used to be an 
important factor in the social life of Nice. They had 
money and they could give an American points on spend- 
ing. Attracted by the sun, many made their homes in 
[ii6] 



NICE 



Nice. They lived like the lilies of the field. They could 
count on a sure thing. The moujiks of great estates 
toiled for them, and from the days of their great-great- 
grandfathers the revenues had never ceased. During the 
first years of the World War, the Russians were in high 
favor at Nice. They were the powerful allies of France, 
brothers-in-arms, who fought for the common cause. 
Then came the Revolution. Cosmopolitan Nice would 
have forgiven the defection of Russia. But when the 
revenues from Petrograd and Moscow banks no longer 
came in, that was another matter ! Where the pursuit of 
pleasure is king, there is no pity for the moneyless 
courtier, whatever the cause of his change of fortune. 
The Russians sold their jewels and their fur coats, the 
rugs and furniture of their villas, and then the villas 
themselves. Perhaps they were "accommodated" a little 
bit at first. But they were soon left to their own re- 
sources. 

Before the end of the war, the center of the Russian 
colony was a soup kitchen on a side street, presided 
over by princesses and served by beautiful million- 
heiresses of the old regime. Good stuff in those girls, 
too, who smiled as gayly as of old and talked to me 
eagerly about becoming governesses or stenographers. 
And real noblesse in the old men who climbed up the 
narrow stairs with their pails, coming to fetch their one 
meal of the day. In one of them I recognized a former 
ambassador to France. The last time I had seen him 
he was on horseback between Czar Nicholas and Presi- 
[117] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



dent Loubet crossing the Point Alexandre III on the 
opening day of the Paris Exposition of 1900. 

Enough of shadows! None ever went to Nice in 
search of them, and comparatively few stay long enough 
to find them. They are in the picture, and there would 
be no true picture without them. But they ought to 
stay in the background. They do stay there. You smell 
the sewage rarely. The all-pervading sunshine is a tonic. 
Speculating about why others came here and what they 
are doing with their lives may hold you through the rainy 
season. The Carnival puts you in a more material frame 
of mind. Unless Lent is early, the sun begins to warm 
the cockles of your heart on Mardi-Gras, and by May 
it will almost blind you on the water-front. One is not 
in the mood to let the misfortunes and unhappiness and 
evil of others cloud his joy. After all, of the quarter 
million pleasure-seekers who come to Nice each year, the 
greater part are in as good moral health as yourself, and 
very few of them have any more reason than you to be 
"in the dumps." 

Unless one becomes engrossed in the study of cosmo- 
politan human nature to the point of being sunshine- 
proof, one soon tires of the foreign residential and hotel 
and shopping quarters of the city. They lack "subjects," 
as the Artist would put it. But at the eastern end of 
Nice, the Old Town, home of Garibaldi and many an- 
other Red Shirt, takes you far from the psychology of 
cosmopolitanism and the philosophy of hedonism. This 
is the direction of Grande Comiche, of villa-studded 
[118] 




&B B- 



P g 



NICE 



winding and mounting roads, of the best views (if we 
except Cimiez) of city and sea. 

A mountain stream of varying volume, but always a 
river before the end of Lent, separates the ville des 
Strangers from the vicillc ville. The Paillon, as it is 
called, disappears at the Square Massena, and finds its 
way to sea through an underground channel. From the 
center of the city you cross the Paillon by the Pont 
Garibaldi or the Pont Vieux. Or you can enter the Old 
Town from the Place Massena and the Rue Saint- 
Fran9ois de Paule, which leads into the Cours Saleya. 
Here is the most wonderful flower market in the world, 
with vegetables and fruit and fowls encroaching upon 
the Place de la Prefecture. Behind the Prefecture you 
can lose yourself in a labyrinth of narrow streets that 
indicate the Italian origin of Nice, If you bear always 
to the right, however, you either make a circle or come 
out at the foot of the Chateau. 

East of the Jardin Public, the Promenade des Anglais 
becomes the Quai du Midi, renamed Quai des Etats-Unis 
in the short-lived burst of enthusiasm of 1918. At 
least, the aldermen of Nice were more cautious than 
those of most French cities, and did not call it Quai du 
President-Wilson net dolce tempo de la prima etade! 
Following the quay and keeping the Old Town on the 
left, you come to the castle hill, still called the Chateau, 
although the great fortress of the Savoyards was de- 
stroyed by the Duke of Berwick in the siege of 1706. 
The hill is now a park, surmounted by a terrace, and is 
[119] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



well worth the climb to look down upon the city and 
the Bale des Anges, especially at sunset. At the end of 
the Quai du Midi (excuse my diffidence, the Quai des 
Etats-Unis) stands the low Tour Bellanda, the only 
tower remaining o£ the old fortifications. The Chateau 
is a promontory, and when you take the road which 
skirts it, be sure to hold tight to your hat. The Ni^ois 
call the windy comer Rauba Capeu (Hat Robber). 

Now you are in still another Nice, the Port, protected 
by a long jetty, on which is perched a lighthouse. The 
Ni^ois, traditionally seafaring folk, are proud of their 
little port, with its clean-cut solid stone quays. Steam- 
born transportation on land and sea, demanding facilities 
undreamed of in the good old days and tending to con- 
centration of trade at Marseilles and Genoa, has pre- 
vented the maritime development of Nice. But there is 
local coast traffic and competition with Cannes and 
Monte Carlo for yachts. Fishing and pleasure sailing 
add to the volume of tonnage. And the Nigois do not 
let you forget that their city is the port for Corsica. 

Beyond the harbor, the Boulevard de ITmperatrice de 
Russie leads to Villef ranche. Another name to change ! 
In the midst of what is most beautiful we cannot get 
away from tragedies, from reminders of blasted hopes. 



[120] 



ANTIBES 



[121] 




CHAPTER X 

Antibes 

BETWEEN Menton and Monte Carlo the coast is 
broken by Cap Martin, between Monte Carlo and 
Nice by Cap Ferrat, between Nice and Cannes by Cap 
d' Antibes. The capes are larger and longer as we go 
west, just as the distances between more important towns 
grow longer. Although it does not seem so to the 
tourist, it is much farther from Nice to Cannes than 
from Nice to Menton. The eastern end of the Riviera is 
so crowded with things to see, and town follows town 
in such rapid succession, that you think you have gone a 
long way from Nice to the Italian frontier. And except 
for skipping the two larger promontories, railway and 
tramway alike follow right along the coast. From Nice 
to Cannes, the tramway is inland from the railway. So 
is the automobile road. You fly along at a rapid rate, 
with only rare glimpses of the sea, and pass through 
few villages until you reach Antibes. 

From Nice, from Saint-Paul-du-Var, and from Cagnes 
you cannot see the Riviera coast beyond Antibes. The 
[123] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



Cape, with its lighthouse and fort, is your horizon. 
This corresponds with history as well as with geography : 
for the Cap d'Antibes was the old Franco-Italian fron- 
tier. It is still in a very real sense a boundary line. 
The word Riviera, which has kept its Italian form, was 
applied historically to the coast lands of the Gulf of 
Genoa. From Antibes to Genoa we had the Riviera 
di Ponente, and from Genoa to Spezia the Riviera di 
Levante. Only after Napoleon III exacted the district 
of Nice as part payment for French intervention in the 
Italian war of liberation was the term "French Riviera" 
gradually extended to include the coast far west of 
Antibes. 

What was added to France under Napoleon III has 
lost its purely Italian character. But it has not gained 
the stamp of France. From Antibes to Menton, the 
Riviera is more remarkably and undeniably international 
than any other bit of the world I have ever seen. Some 
of the old towns back from the coast are becoming 
French in the new generation. But along the coast you 
are not in France until you reach Antibes. You may 
have thought that you were in France at Menton and 
Beaulieu and Nice. But the contrast of Antibes and 
Grasse, which are French to the core, makes you realize 
that sixty years is not sufficient to destroy the traditions 
and instincts of centuries. 

At Antibes and along the closely built up coast and 
between Antibes and Cannes, the international atmos- 
phere is by no means lost. It requires the contrast of 
[124] 










'The French atmosphere begins to impress one at Antibes" 



ANTIBES 



Cannes with Saint-Raphael to show the difference be- 
tween a cosmopoHtan and a genuine French watering 
place. But the French atmosphere begins to impress 
one at Antibes. A knowledge of history is not needed 
to indicate that here was the old frontier. 

Since the days of the Greeks Antibes has been a fron- 
tier fortress. Ruins of fortifications of succeeding cen- 
turies show that the town has always been on the same 
site, on the coast east of the Cape, looking towards 
Nice. Antipolis was a frontier fortress, built by the 
Phoceans of Marseilles to protect them from the aggres- 
sive Ligurians of Genoa. Nice was an outpost, whose 
name commemorates a Greek victory over the Ligurians. 
At the mouth of the Var, from antiquity to modern 
times, races and religions, building against each other 
political systems for the control of Mediterranean com- 
merce, have met in the final throes of conflicts the issue 
of which had been decided elsewhere — and often long 
before the fighting died out here. Phoenicians and 
Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans, Greeks and Romans, 
Romans and Gauls, Gauls and Teutonic tribes, Franks 
and Saracens, Spanish and French and Italians met at 
the foot of the Maritime Alps. There was never a time 
in history when governmental systems or political unities 
did not have as a goal natural boundaries, and, once 
having reached the goal, did not feel that security neces- 
sitated going farther. Invasions thus provoked counter- 
invasions. 

On sea it has been as on land. Something is acquired. 
[125] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



Immediately something more must be taken to safeguard 
the new acquisition. 

All this comes to one with peculiar force at Antibes. 
You look at Nice from your promontory, and your eye 
follows the coast from promontory to promontory, and 
you can picture how the Phoceans, once established at 
Antibes, were tempted to extend the protective system of 
Marseilles. You have only to turn around and follow 
the coast beyond the Esterel to understand how the 
Ligurians, if they had captured Antibes, would still have 
felt unsafe. And then your eye sweeps the range of the 
white Maritime Alps. Hannibal had to cross them to 
carry the war into Italy. So did Napoleon. And 
Caesar, to save the Republic from a recurrence of the 
menace of the Cimbri and Teutoni, brought his armies 
into Gaul. The Saracens were once on this coast. 
When they were expelled from it, the French went to 
Africa as the Romans before them had gone to Africa 
after expelling the Carthaginians from Europe. 

Of the medieval fortress, erected against the Sara- 
cens, two square keeps remain. The strategic impor- 
tance of Antibes during the heyday of the Bourbon Em- 
pire is attested by the Vauban fortifications. The high 
loopholed walls enclosing the harbor have not been main- 
tained intact, but the foundation, a pier over five hun- 
dred feet long, is still, after two centuries and a half, 
the breakwater. The view towards Nice from Vauban's 
Fort Carre or from the larger tower, around which the 
church is built, affords the best panorama of the Mari- 
[126] 



ANTIBES 



time Alps on the Riviera, Nowhere else on the Medi- 
terranean coast, except from Beirut to Alexandretta or 
on the Silician plain or in the Gulf of Saloniki, do you 
have so provoking a contrast of nearby but unattainable 
snow with sizzling heat. This may not be always true. 
The day of the aeroplane, as a common and matter-of- 
fact means of locomotion, is coming. 

Looking towards the Alps from the Fort Carre, the 
donjon of Villeneuve-Loubet and the hill towns of 
Cagnes and Saint-Paul-du-Var, where we had passed 
happy days, seem as near as Nice. Farther off on the 
slope of Mont Ferion we could distinguish Tourette and 
Levens side by side with their castles, and in the fore- 
ground Vence. To the left was Tourrettes. Back from 
the Valley of the Loup was exploration and sketching 
ground for another season. But just a few kilometers 
ahead of us, halfway to Villeneuve-Loubet, Biot tempted 
us. We had driven through this town not mentioned 
by Baedeker, and had promised ourselves a second visit 
to the old church of the Knights Templar. But life con- 
sists of making choices, and one does not readily turn 
his back on the Cap d'Antibes. In the town you are 
just at the beginning of the peninsula whose conical form 
and unshutinness (is that a word: perhaps I should have 
used hyphens?) enables you to walk five miles punctu- 
ating every step with a new exclamation of delight. 

Only we did not walk. Joseph-Marie, who would 
have been Giuseppe-Maria at Nice, stopped to look over 
the Artist's shoulder and incidentally to suggest that we 
[127] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



might have cigarettes. A veteran of two years at 
twenty, his empty left sleeve told why he was reforme. 
Glad to get out of the mess so easily, he explained to us 
laconically; and now he was eking out his pension by 
driving a cart for the Vallauris pottery. The express 
train "burned" (as he put it) the pottery station, and 
he had come to put on grande vitesse parcels at Antibes. 
Cannes was a hopeless place for the potters : baskets of 
flowers always took precedence there over dishes and 
jugs. The Artist believed that Joseph-Marie's horse 
could take us around the cape with less effects from the 
heat than we should suffer, and that for ten francs 
Joseph-Marie could submit to his boss's wrath or invent 
a story of unavoidable delay. I agreed. So did Joseph- 
Marie. If we proved too much heavier than pottery, 
we would take turns walking. At any rate, the Artist's 
kit had found a porter. 

We took the Boulevard du Cap to Les Nielles, were 
lucky in finding the garden of the Villa Thuret open, and 
then let our horse climb up the Boulevard Notre-Dame 
to the lighthouse on top of La Garoupe, as the peninsula's 
hill is called. Here the Riviera coast can be seen in both 
directions. The view is not as extended as that of Cap 
Roux, for Cannes is shut off by the Cap de la Croisette. 
But in compensation you have Nice and the hill towns 
of the Var, and while lacking the clear detail of Cap 
Ferrat and Cap Martin you get the background of the 
Maritime Alps which is not visible east of Nice. And 
the lies de Lerins look so different from their usual 
[128] 



ANTIBES 



aspect as sentinels to Cannes that it is hard to believe 
they are the same islands. Near the lighthouse and 
semaphore a paved path, marked with the stations of the 
cross, leads to a chapel. 

The Villa Thuret is the property of the state, and is 
used as a botanical nursery for the Jardin des Plantes 
at Paris. In variety, however, it does not rival the 
Giardino Hanbury near Menton, and in beauty it is sur- 
passed by the private garden of Villa Eilenroc, near the 
end of the Cap d'Antibes. These two gardens, the most 
remarkable of the Riviera, were made by Englishmen 
who preferred the sun and warmth of the Riviera to their 
native land. The most wonderful garden on Cap Ferrat 
is the creation of an American. Cannes was "made" 
by Lord Brougham. The other important estate of the 
Cap d'Antibes, Chateau de la Garoupe, is the property 
of an Englishman. As at Arcachon and Biarritz and 
Pau, as at Aix-les-Bains, Anglo-Saxon ownership of 
villas and German ownership of hotels and the prevalence 
of Teutons as shopkeepers and waiters prove the passion 
of men of the north for lands of the south. 

Twenty years ago, just after Fashoda, there was a 
strong current of uneasiness among British residents on 
the Riviera. The experiences of civilians caught by 
Napoleon and kept prisoners for years had passed into 
English history and literature. British consuls were sur- 
prised to find that thousands of their compatriots, of 
whom they had had no previous knowledge, were living 
all the year round on the Riviera. These people came 
[ 129 ] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



to make inquiry about what would be done to them if 
France did declare war suddenly against Great Britain. 
Would they be given time to leave the country? Fifteen 
years later the calamity of a sudden interruption of a 
peaceful existence, basking in the sun, did fall upon 
foreigners, but statesmen had shuffled the cards around, 
and this time the civilians caught in the net were Germans 
and Austrians. The Napoleonic principle still held. 
Italy could be seen with the naked eye. But none were 
allowed to pass out. Tourists and residents, subjects of 
the Central Powers, were arrested and imprisoned on 
the lies de Lerins, where they remained five years, many 
of them in sight of their villas on the coast and the hotels 
they had built and managed. They stayed longer than 
Marshal Bazaine, who managed to escape, but not as 
long as the mysterious Man with the Iron Mask. 

One of the keepers at the Antibes lighthouse had been 
an auxiliary soldier in the fort of Sainte-Marguerite 
during the early years of the war. He told us that some 
of the trapped tourists were very restive, but that most 
of the German civilians who were residents of the 
Riviera were far from being discontented with their lot. 
Better a prison on the He Sainte-Marguerite than exile 
from the Riviera! This was better taste and wiser 
philosophy than we expected of Germans. One could go 
far and fare worse than an enforced sojourn on one of 
the loveliest islands of the Mediterranean, whose pine 
forests are reminiscent of Prinkipo. From i9i4to 1919 
life was much harsher beyond those Alps. 
[130] 







"Saint-Honorat was a monastic establishment from the 
fourth century to the Revolution" 



ANTIBES 



Salnt-Honorat, the smaller island half a mile from 
Sainte-Marguerite, was a monastic establishment from 
the fourth century to the French Revolution. It passed 
into ecclesiastical hands again in the Second Empire and 
became a Cistercian monastery. Although the restora- 
tion was accomplished with distressing thoroughness 
forty years ago, some parts of the chapel date back to 
the seventh century, and a huge double donjon — the 
dominating feature of the island from the coast — re- 
mains from the twelfth-century fortifications. A road, 
on which are ruins of four medieval chapels, runs round 
the island. We were unable to visit Sainte-Marguerite 
and on Saint-Honorat pencil and paper had to be kept 
out of sight. But I must not wander to another day. 

Joseph-Marie liked our tobacco and the horse did not 
mind stopping en route. It was six o'clock when we 
reached Juan-les-Pins, only a mile from Antibes on the 
other side of the cape. Two miles farther along the 
coast, at Golfe-Juan, where the road turns in to Vallauris, 
we climbed down from the cart, brushed much dust 
from our clothes, and started home along the coast road 
to Cannes. Joseph-Marie waved his empty sleeve in 
farewell, happy in our promise to look him up some day 
in Vallauris with a pocketful of cigarettes. 



[131] 



CANNES 



[133] 




s-l-lfl 



CHAPTER XI 



Cannes 



OF one-half of Tarascon the prince whom Tartarin 
met in Algiers displayed an astonishingly detailed 
knowledge. Concerning the rest of the town he was 
as astonishingly noncommittal. When it leaked out that 
the prince had been in the Tarascon jail long enough to 
become familiar with what could be seen from one 
window, Tartarin understood his limitation. My picture 
of Cannes is as indelible as the prince's picture of 
Tarascon. For most of my Riviera days were spent in 
a villa across the Golfe de la Napoule from Cannes. 
Not infrequently our baby Hope gave us the privilege of 
seeing Cannes by sunrise. We ate and worked on a 
terrace below our bedroom windows. Every evening we 
watched Cannes disappear or become fairyland in the 
moonlight. 

[I3S] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



What we saw from the Villa Etoile was the Golfe de 
la Napoule from the Pointe de I'Esquillon to the Cap 
de la Croisette. The Corniche de I'Esterel rounded the 
Esquillon and came down to sea level at Theoule through 
a forest of pines. It passed our villa. The curve of the 
gulf between us and Cannes was only seven miles. First 
came La Napoule, above whose old tower on the sea 
rose a hill crowned with the ruins of a chapel. A via- 
duct with narrow arches carried the railway across the 
last ravine of the Esterel. In the plain, between two 
little rivers, the Siagne and the Riou, was a grove of 
umbrella pines. Here began the Boulevard Jean Hibert, 
protected by a sea-wall in concrete, leading into Cannes. 
The town of Cannes, flanked on the left by Mont 
Chevalier and on the right by La Croisette, displayed a 
sohd mass of hotels on the water front. Red-roofed 
villas climbed to Le Cannet and La Calif ornie, elbowing 
each other in the town and scattering in the suburbs 
until the upper villas were almost lost in foliage. Be- 
hind were the Maritime Alps. Not far beyond La 
Croisette, the Cap d'Antibes jutted out into the sea. At 
night the lighthouses of Cannes and Antibes flashed alter- 
nately red and green, and between them Cannes sparkled. 
Inland to the left of Cannes were Mougins on a hill 
and Grasse above on the mountain side. Occasional 
trails of smoke marked the main line of the railway 
along the coast and the branch line from Cannes to 
Grasse. In the sea lay the lies de Lerins, Sainte-Mar- 
guerite almost touching the point of La Croisette. 
[136] 



^ 






^^ 'I 









-TJ : 



to 
O V 



il 




CANNES 



But unlike the Prince, we did have a chance to see 
Cannes at other angles. Cannes was the metropolis to 
which we went hopefully to hire cooks, find amusement, 
and buy food and drink. Theoule had neither stores nor 
cafes, and after the Artist came we were glad to vary 
the monotony of suburban life. It is always that way 
with city folk. How wonderful the quiet, how delight- 
ful the seclusion of the "real country" ! But after a 
few weeks, while you may hate yourself for wanting 
noise and lights, while you may still affect to despise the 
herding instinct, you find yourself quite willing to com- 
mune with nature a little less intimately than in the 
first enthusiastic days of your escape from the whirl 
and the turmoil of your accustomed atmosphere. Not 
that Cannes is ever exactly "whirl and turmoil ;" but you 
could have tea at Rumpelmayer's, you could dance and 
listen to music and see shows at the Casino, and you 
could look in shop windows. On the terrace of the 
Villa Etoile we thanked God that we were out in the 
country, and we loved our walks on the Corniche road 
and back into the Esterel. But it was a comfort to 
have Cannes so near ! We were not dependent upon the 
twice-a-day omnibus train, which made all the stops be- 
tween Marseilles and Nice. An hour and a half of 
brisker walking than one would have cared to indulge 
in farther east on the Riviera took us to Cannes, and 
the cockers were always reasonable about driving out to 
Theoule in the evening. 

From our villa to La Napoule we were still in the 
[137] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



Esterel. Then we crossed the mouth of the Siagne by 
a bridge, and came down to the sea on the Boulevard 
Jean Hibert. Between the mouth of the Siagne and 
Mont ChevaHer are the original villas of Cannes and the 
hotels of the Second Empire. Here Lord Brougham 
built the Villa Eleonore Louise in 1834, when Cannes 
was a fishing village, not better known than any other 
hamlet along the coast. Here are the Chateau Vallom- 
brosa (now the Hotel du Pare), the Villa Laroche- 
foucauld and the Villa Rothschild, whose unrivaled 
gardens are shut off by high walls and shrubbery. They 
are well worth a visit: but you must know when and 
how to get into them. As you near Mont Chevalier, 
the sea wall, no longer needed to protect the railway 
(which for a couple of miles had to run right on the 
sea to avoid the grounds and villas laid out before it 
was dreamed of), recedes for a few hundred feet and 
leaves a beach. 

On Mont Chevalier is the Old Town, grouped around 
a ruined castle and an eleventh-century tower. The 
parish church is of the thirteenth century. The build- 
ings on the quay below, facing the port, are of the 
middle of the nineteenth century. But they look much 
older. For they were built by townspeople, and serve 
the needs of the small portion of the population which 
would be living in Cannes if it were not a fashionable 
watering place. Despite its marvelous growth, Nice has 
always maintained a life and industries apart from 
tourists and residents of the leisure class. Cannes, on 
[138] 



CANNES 



the other hand, with the exception of the Httle Quartier 
du Suquet, is a watering place. It needs Mont Chevalier, 
as Monte Carlo needs Monaco, to make us realize that 
Cannes existed before this spot was taken up and de- 
veloped by French and British nobility. The square 
tower and the cluster of buildings around it, the hotels 
and restaurants of fishermen on the Quai Saint Pierre, 
dominate the port. This bit out of the past, and of an- 
other world in the present, is at the end of the vista as 
one walks along Ihe Promenade de la Croisette : and the 
Boulevard Jean Hibert runs right into it. The touch 
of antiquity would otherwise be lacking, and the Artist 
would scarcely have considered it worth his while to take 
his kit when we went to Cannes. 

The port is formed by a breakwater extending out 
from the point of Mont Chevalier, with a jetty opposite. 
Except for the fishermen, who are strong individualists 
and sell their catch right from their boat, the harbor's 
business is in keeping with the city's business. Its 
shipping consists of pleasure craft. Among the yachts 
whose home is Cannes one used to see the Lysistrata of 
Commodore James Gordon Bennett. How many times 
have I received irate messages and the other kind, too, 
both alike for my own good, sent from that vessel ! In 
the garden of his beautiful home at Beaulieu, between 
Villefranche and Monaco, the Commodore told me of 
the offer he had received from the Russian Government 
for this famous yacht. Not many months after the 
Lysistrata disappeared from its anchorage at Cannes, 
[139] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



the man who had been the reason — and means — of 
Riviera visits to more journaHsts than myself died at 
Beaulieu. 

Only on the side of Mont Chevalier has the harbor 
a quay. The inner side is bordered by the Alices de la 
Liberte, a huge rectangle with rows of old trees under 
which the flower market is held every morning. At the 
Old Town end is the Hotel de Ville and at the east end 
the Casino. Running out seaward from beside the 
Casino is the Jetee Albert Edouard. To its very end 
the jetty is paved, and when a stiff sea wind is blowing 
you can drink in the spray to your heart's content. Be- 
hind the Casino is a generous beach. This is one great 
advantage of Cannes over Nice, where instead of sand 
you have gravel and pebbles. The Riviera is largely 
deserted before the bathing season sets in, but one does 
miss the sand. At Cannes kiddies are not deprived of 
pails and shovels and grownups can stretch out their 
blankets and plant their umbrellas. 

The Promenade de la Croisette runs along the sea 
from the Casino to the Restaurant de la Reserve on La 
Croisette. The difference between the Promenade de la 
Croisette and the Promenade des Anglais was summed 
up by an English friend of mine in five words. "More 
go-carts and less dogs," he said. "More wives and less 
cocottes," the Artist put it. Of course there are some 
children at Nice and some cocottes at Cannes. And 
where fashion reigns the difference between mondaine 
and demi-mondaine is unfortunately not always apparent. 
[140] 




•A bit out of the past, and of another world 
in the present" 



CANNES 



Gold frequently glitters. But Cannes is less garish than 
Nice in buildings and in people. 

Doubling the Cap de la Croisette, we are in the Golfe 
Juan, with the Cap d'Antibes beyond. Here Napoleon, 
fearing his possible reception at Saint-Raphael, landed 
on his return from Elba. A column marks the spot. 
Bound for the final test of arms at Waterloo, Napoleon 
little dreamed that twenty years later his English foes 
would begin to make a peaceable conquest of this coast, 
and that within a hundred years French and English 
would be fighting side by side on French soil against the 
Germans. How much has the Englishman's love of the 
Riviera had to do with the Entente Cordiale? What 
part has the Riviera played in the Franco-Russian 
Alliance? British and Russian sovereigns have shown 
as passionate a fondness for this comer of France as 
their subjects. There are English and Russian churches 
at Cannes and Nice. Men who played a vital part in 
forming the present alliance were regular visitors to the 
Riviera. At the beginning of the Promenade de la 
Croisette, only three miles from the Napoleon column, 
stands Puech's remarkable statue of Edward VH, who 
spoke French with a German accent, but who never con- 
cealed his preference for France over the land of his 
ancestors. 

One charm of Cannes is the feeling one has of not 

being crowded. At Nice and along the eastern Riviera 

hotels and villas jostle each other. Around Cannes the 

gardens are more important than the buildings. Strik- 

[ 141 ] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



ing straight inland from the Casino past the railway sta- 
tion, the broad Boulevard Carnot gradually ascends to 
Le Cannet. This is the only straight road out of Cannes. 
All the other roads wind and turn, bringing you con- 
stantly around unexpected corners until you have lost 
your sense of direction. Branches of trees stick out 
over garden walls overhung with vines. Many of the 
largest hotels can be reached only by these chemins. 
You realize that the city has grown haphazard, and that 
no methodical city architect was allowed to make boule- 
vards and streets that would disturb the seclusion of 
the villa-builders, who plotted out their grounds with 
never a thought of those who might later build higher 
up. So roads skirted properties. The result does not 
commend itself to those who are in a hurry. But it 
gives suburban Cannes an aspect unique on the Riviera. 
Many of the hotels thus hidden away are built on private 
estates, and if you want to get to them you have to 
follow all the curves. 

The labyrinthine approach adds greatly to the delight 
of a climb to La Californie. If you go by carriage, 
unless you have a map, you are tempted to feel that the 
cocker is taking a roundabout route to justify the high 
price he asked you. But if you go afoot — and without 
a map — you may find yourself back at the point of de- 
parture before you know it. But however extended 
your wanderings, the beauty of the roads is ample com- 
pensation, and when you reach at last the Square du 
Splendide-Panorama, nearly eight hundred feet above 
[142] 



r^:^ 




"Around Cannes the gardens are more important than 
the buildings" 



CANNES 



the city, you are rewarded by a view of mountains and 
sea, from Nice to Cap Roux, which makes you say once 
more — as you have so often done in Riviera explorations 
— "This is the best !" 

After lunch at the observatory we decided to walk on 
to Vallauris and look up our friend of Antibes at the 
pottery. A cocher without a fare persuaded us to visit 
the aqueduct at Clausonne en route to Vallauris. He 
painted the glories of the scenery and of Roman masonry. 
"You will never regret listening to me," he urged. We 
followed the wave of his hand, and climbed meekly 
aboard, although at lunch we had been carrying on an 
antiphonal hymn of praise to the pleasure and benefit of 
shanks' mare. 

We did not regret abandoning our walk. I managed 
to get the Artist by the Chapelle de Saint-Antoine on 
the Col de Vallauris and to limit him to a hasty croquis 
of the Clausonne Aqueduct. We were out for pleasure, 
with no thought of articles. When you feel that you 
are going to have to turn your adventures to a practical 
use, it does take away from the sense of relaxation that 
a writer like anyone else craves for on his day off. On 
the road to Vallauris we were more struck by the heather 
than any other form of vegetation. The mountains and 
hills were covered with it, and whatever else we saw, 
heather was always in the picture on the hills and mimosa 
along the roadside. From the roots of transplanted 
Mediterranean heather — and not from briar — are made 
what we call briarwood pipes. When a salesman as- 
[143] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



sures you that the pipe he offers is "genuine briar," if it 
really was briar, you would think it wasn't. When 
names have become trademarks, we have to persist in 
their misuse. 

Vallauris was called the golden valley {vallis aurea) 
because of the pottery the Romans discovered the natives 
making from the fine clay of the banks of the little 
stream that runs into the Golfe Juan. For twenty cen^ 
turies the inhabitants of Vallauris have found no reason 
to change their metier. They are still making dishes and 
vases and statuettes, and there is still plenty of clay. 
Moreover, modern methods have not found a substitute 
either for the potter at his wheel or for the little ovens 
of limited capacity when it comes to turning out work 
that is flawless and bears the stamp of individuality. 
We can manufacture almost everything en masse and in 
series except pottery. Joseph-Marie was not in evidence 
at Vallauris : but we found the potters glad to show us 
their work, seemingly for the pride they had in it. Of 
course you did have a chance to buy : but salesmanship 
was not obtrusive. 

The great industry of Cannes is fresh cut flowers. 
The flower market of a morning in the Alices de la 
Liberte is richer in variety than that of Nice. There is 
less charm, however, in the sellers. In Nice you simply 
cannot help buying what is offered you. Pretty faces 
and soft pleading voices draw the money from your 
pocket. You look from the flowers to those who offer 
them : and then you buy the flowers. At Cannes, on the 
[144] 






A-i^*^< 










^''■^^'^ ..s^-ldsi 






';^ljL^rJ..^-Xfj 



:ir 



•17, 



rO<:^ 



"There is less charm in the sellers than at Ni 



CANNES 



other hand, you ask yourself first what in the world you 
are going to do with them after you have them. Per- 
haps this difference in your mood is the reason of the 
enormous industry that has been developed in Cannes. 
You are not asked to buy flowers because a seller wants 
you to and is able to lure you with a smile. You are 
told that here is the unique chance to send your friends 
in Paris and London a bit of the springtime fragrance 
of the Riviera. 

"Three francs, five francs, ten francs, monsieur, and 
tomorrow morning in Paris or tomorrow evening in 
London the postman will deliver the flowers to your 
friend." 

Pen and ink, cards, ^mmed labels or tags are put 
under your nose. You are shown the little reed baskets, 
in rectangular form, that will carry your gift. If your 
Paris or London friend knows Latin, and thinks a 
minute, he will realize that Cannes is living up to her 
name in thus utilizing her reeds to send out over Europe 
an Easter greeting, jonquils, carnations, roses, geraniums 
with the smell of lemons, orange blossoms, cassia, 
jessamine, lilacs, violets and mimosa. 



[145] 



MOUGINS 



[1471 




CHAPTER XII 

MOUGINS 

T 71 TE were about to enter the Casino at Cannes. The 
V V coin had been flipped to decide which of us 
should pay, and we were starting up the steps when a 
yell and a clatter of horses* hoofs made us look around. 
A victoria was bearing down upon us. The cocker was 
waving his whip in our direction. We recognized the 
man who had driven us to Grasse. 

"A superb afternoon," he explained, "and Mougins is 
only twelve kilometers away. With Mougins at twelve 
kilometers, it is incredible to think that you would be 
spending an afternoon like this in the Casino. I would 
surely be lacking in my duty — " 

"What is Mougins?" I interrupted. 

"All that is beautiful," explained the cocker en- 
thusiastically. "A city on a hill. A glorious view." 

"That settles it," said the Artist, turning away. 
"Every city is on a hill, and all views are glorious." 
[149] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



"But Mougins is different," insisted the cocher, "and 
the view is different. Besides, the wine is unique. It 
is sparkling, and can be taken at five o'clock with little 
cakes. There are roads you have not seen, and pretty- 
girls at work in the rose fields. We shall drive slowly." 
There had been much wandering during the past fort- 
night and we were ready for a quiet afternoon at the 
Casino. But we allowed ourselves to be persuaded. 
The Casino was always there, and we had never heard 
of vin mousseux on the Riviera. Baedeker, as if in 
duty bound to miss nothing, records the existence of 
Mougins, three kilometers east of the Cannes-Grasse road 
after you pass the ten-kilometer stone on the way to 
Grasse — then gives the next town. Mougins is not 
starred, and nothing around Mougins is starred. Was 
not that a reason for going there? 

English royalty used to come to Cannes, and every 
season more middle class Britishers woke up to the fact 
that it would be pleasant to write home to one's friends 
from Cannes. Hotels and villas increased rapidly. 
When English royalty went elsewhere, Russian Grand 
Dukes and Balkan princelings saved the day for the 
snobs. Consequently, the town has spread annoyingly 
into the country. A row of hotels faces the sea, and on 
side streets are less pretentious hotels, invariably ad- 
vertised as a minute's walk from the sea. A mile inland 
is another quarter of fashionable hotels for those whom 
the splashing of the waves makes nervous. Then the 
interminable suburbs of villas and pensions commence. 
[150] 



MOUGINS 



When city people seek a change of climate, they do 
not always want a change of environment. They are 
intent upon living the same life as at home, upon fol- 
lowing the same round of amusements. They cannot 
be happy without their comforts and conveniences, and 
this means the impossibility of getting away from 
streets and buildings and noises and crowds. The class 
that has monopolized the Riviera has tried to recreate 
Paris in the Midi. If one wants to find the country 
right on the sea coast, one must get off the train before 
reaching Cannes. Between Cannes and the Italian fron- 
tier, one does not have the sea without the city. Only 
by going inland can one find the country without miss- 
ing the sight and feel of the sea. For ever3rwhere the 
land rises. The valleys rise. Roads keep mounting and 
curving to avoid heavy grades, and foothills do not hide 
the Alps and the Mediterranean. After escaping from 
Cannet, the outermost suburb, the road to Mougins goes 
through a valley of oranges and roses. There are stone 
farmhouses with thatched roofs and barns that give 
forth the smell of hay. There are cows and chickens. 

.We were congratulating ourselves upon having given 
up the casino long before we reached Mougins. We 
forgave the cocher his exaggeration about the workers 
in the rose fields. When one sees in paintings and in 
the cinematograph pretty girls engaged in agricultural 
pursuits, it is more than even money that they are mod- 
els and actresses in disguise. I am enthusiastic in my 
cult of the country, but I have never carried it to the 
[151] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



point of becoming ecstatic over country maidens. There 
must be, of course, as many good-looking girls in the 
country as in the city. But could a chorus of milk- 
maids to satisfy New York or Paris be recruited outside 
New York or Paris? 

When we reached the uncompromising stretch of road 
that led up to Mougins, we took mercy upon the horses. 
The cocker had not driven them as slowly as he had 
promised. We walked a mile through olive orchards, 
and were in the town before we realized it. Unlike 
other hill cities of the Riviera that we had visited, 
Mougins has no castle and no walls. Few traces remain 
of outside fortifications. All around Mougins the land 
is cultivated. One does not realize the abruptness of the 
hilltop, for the city rises from fields and vineyards and 
orchards. Saint-Paul-du-Var and Villeneuve-Loubet re- 
mind one of the days when self-defense was a constant 
preoccupation. Mougins long ago forgot feudal quarrels, 
foreign invasions and raids of Saracens and Barbary 
pirates. The peasants still live together on a hilltop, 
going forth in the morning and coming back in the even- 
ing. But they have taken the stone of their walls for 
fences, and of their towers for bams. They have 
brought their tilled land up the hillside to the city. 

On the main street, we had the impression that the 
medieval character of Mougins was lost by rebuilding. 
Ailanthus trees and whitewashed walls and red-tiled 
roofs greeted us. The church and the market-place were 
of the Third Republic. Sleepy cafes displayed enameled 
[152] 



MOUGINS 



tin advertisements of Paris drinks. The signs in front 
of the notions shop declared the merits of rival Paris 
newspapers. But when we were hunting out a vantage 
point from which to get the view of Cannes and the 
Mediterranean, the Artist saw much to tempt his pencil. 
Back from the main street, old Mougins survived, none 
the less charming from the constant contrasts of old and 
new. 

The arch of a city gate, perfectly preserved on one 
side, lost itself in a modern building across the street. 
A woman, leaning out of a window, wanted to know 
what the Artist was doing. I explained our interest in 
the arch. Had there been a gate in her grandmother's 
time? Why, when so much of a former age had dis- 
appeared, did this half-arch remain? The woman was 
puzzled. It was incomprehensible that anyone should 
be interested in the arch, which had always been there. 
I thought I would try her on current events. 

"Many men have gone from Mougins to the war?" 
I asked. 

"Yes." 

"How many ?" 

Instantly suspicion flashed in the woman's eyes. "Ask 
that at the Mairie," she snapped. 

The conversation ended, but accusing eyes remained 
fixed upon me until the Artist had finished his sketch. I 
never felt more like a spy in my life, and could picture 
myself hauled before the authorities for having tried to 
secure military information. What an advantage to the 
[153] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



enemy if they could be sure just how many men had 
gone from Mougins! 

Mougins lives in medieval fashion, if not wholly in 
medieval houses. Dependent upon occasional water 
from the heavens for carrying sewage down the hillside, 
Mougins has no use for gutters and drains. Rubbish 
is thrown from windows, and tramped down into last 
year's layer of pavement. Goats enjoy the rich pastur- 
age of old boots and cans and papers and rags and vege- 
tables that had lived beyond their day. Although, as 
we walked through the alleys, we saw no one, heard no 
one, the houses were inhabited : for much of the garbage 
was painfully recent, and clothes flapped on lines from 
window to window over our heads. The Artist sug- 
gested that the townspeople might be taking a siesta. 
But it was late in the afternoon for that. Then we 
remembered that Mougins was an agricultural commu- 
nity, and that the work of the town was in the fields. 
This explained also why we saw no shops and no evi- 
dences of trade. Olives, flowers, wine, fruit and vege- 
tables are taken to the markets of Cannes and Grasse, 
and the people of Mougins buy what they need where 
they sell. Mougins has only bakeries and cafes. Bread 
and alcohol alone are indispensable where people dwell 
together. 

We circled the city, and came out on the promenade 

across which we had entered Mougins. Every French 

town has an illustrious son, for whom a street is nam.ed, 

on whose birthplace a tablet is put, and to whom a monu- 

[154] 



MOUGINS 



ment is raised. Our tour had taken us through the Rue 
du Commandant Lamy. We had read the inscription 
on his home, and were now before his monument, a 
bust on a slender pedestal, with the glorious sweep of 
La Napoule for a background. The peasants of 
Mougins, as they go out to and return from the labor 
of vineyard, orchard and field, pass by the Lamy 
memorial. Even when they are of one's own blood, is 
there inspiration in the daily reminder of heroes? How 
many from Mougins have followed Lamy's example? I 
have often wondered whether monuments mean anything 
except to tourists. 

As I had recently been writing upon French colonial 
history, Lamy's daring and fruitful journeys in Central 
Africa were fresh in my mind, and I remembered his 
tragic death in the Wadai fifteen years ago. An old 
man had just come up the hill, and was dragging weary 
legs encased in clay-stained trousers across the prome- 
nade. A conical basket of lettuce heads was on his 
back, and he used the handle of his hoe as a cane. 

"Did you know Lamy ?" I inquired. 

"Lamy was a boy in this town when I was a grown 
man going to my work, I used to pass him playing on 
this very spot," he answered. 

As we walked along toward the main street, we asked 
whether there were others from Mougins who, like 
Lamy, had played a part in the history of France abroad. 
No, the people of Mougins liked to stay at home- 
Fortunately for the prosperity of the country, the young 
[155] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



men returned after their military service, and the attrac- 
tions and opportunities of city Hfe rarely took them and 
held them farther away than Cannes and Grasse. The 
Artist had his eye on the lettuce basket and the hoe, and 
I wanted to hear more of life in Mougins. -We asked 
the old man to share a bottle with us. 

The cocher was waiting in front of a cafe, and corrob- 
orated the statement on a huge painted sign, that here 
was to be found the true vin mousseux of Mougins. It 
was evident that we were not the first tourists to come 
from Cannes. The cocher was a friend of the pro- 
prietress, who made us welcome in the way tourists are 
greeted. Little cakes and a dusty bottle were produced 
promptly, and in the stream of words that greeted us 
we could gather that this was a red-letter occasion for 
us, and that it was possible to have the vin mousseux of 
Mougins shipped to Paris by the dozen or the hundred. 
This annoyed us and dampened our ardor for the treat. 
The Artist and I share a foolish feeling of wanting to 
be pioneers. We like to believe that our travels take us 
out of the beaten path, and that we are constantly dis- 
covering delectable places. After us the tourists — but 
not before! 

The corkscrew of the proprietress, however, consoled 
us. A corkscrew through whose handle the beaded 
pressure of gas escapes before the cork is drawn may be 
common enough. But the fact remains that neither of 
us had seen one. We expressed our delight and wonder, 
and the Artist naively told the proprietress, before he 
[156] 







'Mougins lives in medieval fashion, and has no use 
for gutters and drains" 



MOUGINS 



tasted the wine, that he felt rewarded for the trip to 
Mougins just for the discovery of the corkscrew. After 
the first sip, I added that now we knew why we had 
walked up the long hill. The proprietress and the 
cocher beamed. Our enthusiasm meant money to them. 
The old man twisted his mouth contemptuously. 

"Tell me, then," he said, "what was your thought of 
me when you saw me coming up the hill to the prome- 
nade with my burden of lettuce heads? And when I 
told you that I had seen Lamy playing as a boy on the 
spot where his statue stands? Sorry for me, were you 
not? Lamy had the good sense, you think, to quit 
Mougins, and go out to glory. I and the rest of 
Mougins, you think, have stayed here because we do not 
know any better. It is all in the point of view. One 
of you is enthusiastic over a patent corkscrew, and the 
other over the wine. You tourists from the city can- 
not understand us. It is because you carry your limita- 
tions with you. You think you lead a large, broad, 
varied life. You do not. Finding the greatest interest 
of Mougins in a patent corkscrew and sparkling wine be- 
trays you." 

"Ces messieurs have a passion for the country and 
for towns away from the railroad," remonstrated the 
cocher. "This afternoon I tempted them from the 
Casino at Cannes. They are a thousand times enthusi- 
astic about Mougins, your homes, your streets, your 
views, and all they have seen in the valley coming here. 
If they had limitations, would they have wanted to come? 
[157] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



It is senseless to think that they make the effort, that 
they spend the money, just to be pleased with what they 
see from their own world or what reminds them of their 
own world. I spend my life with tourists, and they al- 
ways appreciate, I have never known them to fail to 
thank me for having brought them to Mougins." 

Our critic — ^and, indeed, our judge — turned on the 
cocher. 

"Tell me," he said sharply, raising his voice wither- 
ingly, "would you risk bringing tourists to Mougins if 
there were not this cafe and the vin mousseux?" 

The cocher puffed his cigar vigorously. The Artist, 
highly delighted, broke an almost invariable rule to 
prove that the greatest interest of Mougins was not the 
corkscrew. He opened his sketch-book. While the old 
man was fingering the sketches, I ordered another bottle. 

Our guest had been the vanguard of the homeward 
procession. All Mougins was now passing before us. 
We wondered if the war was responsible for the large 
number of women, from grandmothers to little girls, and 
why old men had to go out to work in the fields. For 
the passers-by included every category of the population 
of Mougins. 

"Now you see," continued our mentor, "what it is to 
live. A score of men who knew Lamy have passed be- 
fore you. They did not go to Africa to hunt negroes 
and to put our flag on the map at the same time as the 
names of unknown towns. They are here, and will eat 
a good dinner tonight. Lamy is dead. Now I do not 
1 158] 



MOUGINS 



say that we are heroes, and that our point of view is 
heroic. But I do say that we are not to be pitied. And 
I say, moreover, that we do as much for France as Lamy 
did. If we had all gone to Africa, there might be more 
names on the map, but there would be less food in the 
markets of Grasse and Cannes." 

"Oh, for the ghost of Gray," commented the Artist. 
"He would be face to face with the 'unseen flower' — but 
not blushing!" 

"A case of auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit," I 
answered. 

We were getting classical as well as philosophical, and 
it was time to go. To whom was the mediocrity ? 



[159] 






uispoui B ut jps)! iso[ ajeS X;p b jo x^ojb 3^J_„ 




FREJUS 



[161I 




CHAPTER XIII 
Frejus 

THE ride from Theoule to St. Raphael, by the 
Comiche de I'Esterel, gives a feeling of satiety. 
The road along the sea is a succession of curves, each 
one leading around a rocky promontory into a bay that 
causes you to exclaim, "This is the best!" For thirty- 
five kilometers there is constantly a new adjustment of 
values, until you find yourself at the point where com- 
paratives and superlatives are exhausted. The vehicle 
of language has broken down. Recurrent adjectives be- 
come trite. When the search for new ones is an effort, 
you realize that nature has imposed, through the prodigal 
display of herself, a limit of capacity to enjoy. Of 
copper rocks and azure sea; of mountain streams hurry- 
ing through profusely wooded valleys; of cliffs with 
changing profiles; of conifers; of enclosed parks, whose 
charm of undergrowth run wild and of sunlit green tree- 
[163] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



trunks successfully hides the controlling hand of man 
to the uninitiated in forestry; of hedges and pergolas 
and ramblers and villas and lighthouses and islets and 
yachts, we had our fill. 

But at La Napoule a Roman milestone announced that 
we were on the road to Forum Julii : and the very first 
thing that attracted us when we reached St. Raphael 
was a bit of aqueduct on the promenade. It looked 
singularly out of place right by the sea, and surrounded 
by an iron fence quite in keeping with those of the hotels 
across the street. The inscription (Third Republic, not 
Roman) told us that this portion of the aqueduct from 
the River Siagne to Frejus was removed from its original 
emplacement and set up here under the prefectship of 
Monsieur X, the subprefectship of Monsieur Y, and the 
mayorship of Monsieur Z. The fishing village that has 
rapidly grown into one of the most important "resorts" 
of the Riviera claims distinction on historical grounds. 
Napoleon landed at St. Raphael on his return from Elba. 
Gounod composed Romeo and Juliet here. General 
Gallieni was cultivating his vineyard here when the war 
of 1 91 4 broke out, and the call to arms sent him from 
his seclusion to become the savior of Paris. But when 
ruins became fashionable in the last decade of Queen 
Victoria, it was necessary for St. Raphael to have an 
ancient monument. An arch of the aqueduct was im- 
ported to the beach with as little regard for congruous 
setting as Mr. Croesus-in-Ten- Years shows in importing 
an English lawn to his front yard at Long Branch and a 
[164] 



dlh 



■yr-^fr^ 











V 






'The Corniche de I'Esterel is a road of copper rocks 

and azure sea" 



FREJUS 



gallery of ancestral portraits to his dining-room on Fifth 
Avenue. 

The Artist looked at the ruins in silence. He tried to 
gnaw the ends of his mustache. His eyes changed 
from amusement to contempt, and then to interest. I 
was ready for his question. 

"Say, where is this town Frejus ?" 

The cocher protested. He had bargained to take us to 
St. Raphael, the horses were tired, and anyway there was 
no good hotel, no food, nothing to do at Frejus. 

"Where is Frejus?" repeated the Artist, The cocher 
pointed his whip unwillingly westward along the shore. 
The Artist turned to me with his famous nose-and-eyes- 
and-chin-up expression. 

"What do you say, mon vieuxf" 

"Decidedly Frejus," I answered. 

Accustomed to American queerness, the cocher re- 
signed himself to the reins for another five kilometers. 

Since the River Argens began to flow, it has been de- 
positing silt against the eastern shore of the Gulf of 
Frejus, at the point of which stands St. Raphael. 
Consequently the road, sentineled by linden trees, crosses 
a rich plain, and is more than a mile from the sea when 
it reaches the city of Julius Caesar. The upper ends of 
the mole of the ancient port, high and dry like ships at 
low tide, join the walls of the canal. You have to look 
closely to distinguish the canal and the depression of the 
basin into which it widens near the town. For where 
land has encroached upon sea, vegetable gardens and 
[165] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



orchards have been planted. Inland, the arches from the 
aqueduct of the Siagne shed their bricks in wheat fields 
and protrude from clumps of hazels. As it enters the 
city, the road turns back on itself and mounts to the mar- 
ket-place. The sharp outward bend of the elevation 
above the narrow stretch of lowland suggest that there 
was a time, long before Roman days, when Frejus, like 
the towns of the Corniche de I'Esterel, was built on a 
promontory. 

Frejus belongs to no definite period. It is not Roman, 
medieval, modem. It is not a watering-place fashionable 
or unfashionable, a manufacturing town prosperous or 
struggling, a port bustling or sleepy, a fishing-village or 
a flower-gathering center. Frejus suggests no marked 
racial characteristics in architecture or inhabitants. It 
is neither distinctly Midi nor distinctly Italian — as those 
terms are understood by travelers. Frejus is unique 
among the cities of the Cote d'Azur because it has no 
unmistakable cachet. Frejus suggests Rome, the Middle 
Ages, the twentieth century. Frejus embraces pleasure- 
seeking, industries, fish, flowers, and soldiering. Mer- 
maids, delightfully reminiscent of the Lido and Abbazia 
in garb, dive from the end of the mole into a safe swim- 
ming-pool; children of the proletariat in coarse black 
tablierSj who have not left sandals and white socks on 
the beach behind them, fish for crabs; naval aviators 
start hydroplanes from an aerodrome beside the Roman 
amphitheater; fishermen, of olive Mediterranean com- 
plexion, dry copper-tinted nets on the beach, laying them, 
[i66] 




"Frejus belongs to no definite period. It has no marked racial 
characteristics in architecture or inhabitants" 



FREJUS 



despite the scolding of the Senegalese guards, upon piles 
of granite and cement blocks with which flaxen-haired 
German prisoners are building a new pier. 

We had come to the beach for an after-luncheon 
smoke, and when we were not looking at the Senegalese 
and Germans, our eyes wandered from hydroplanes and 
machine-gun-armed motor-boats to the mermaids on the 
Roman mole. Not till we ran out of tobacco and the 
mole ran out of mermaids did we realize that Frejus was 
still unexplored and unsketched. We gave ourselves a 
six o'clock rendezvous on the beach. The Artist started 
to seek Roman ruins, while I turned towards the market- 
place, cathedral bound. Sea-level villas came first, and 
then a quarter of sixteenth-century houses, many of 
which showed on the ground floor medieval foundations. 
In two places I got back to the Romans. A cross sec- 
tion of tTiin flat bricks with generous interstices of 
cement in the front wall of a greengrocer's opposite, 
indicated the line of the Roman fortification. Walking 
around the next parallel street, I managed to get into 
a garden where a long piece of the wall remained. 

I came out to the St. Raphael carriage road at a corner 
where arose a huge square tower of the Norman period. 
Almost to its crumbling top, houses had been built 
against it on two sides. The angle formed by the alley 
through which I came and the main street had fortu- 
nately kept the other two sides clear. The tower was 
the home of a wine and coal merchant, who had laid in 
a supply of cut wood on his roof to the height of several 
[167] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



feet above the irregular parapet. Outside one of the 
narrow vertical slits, which in ages past had served as 
vantage point for a vizored knight fitting arrow to bow, 
hung a parrot cage. "Coco" was chattering Marseilles 
sailor French. 

A single gargoyle remained. It was a panther, 
elongated like a dachshund. He was desecrated and 
humiliated by having tied around his middle the end of 
the clothesline that stretched across the alley. This 
proved, however, that he still held firmly his place. The 
panther, ignoring change of fortune, looked down as of 
yore, snarling, and with whiskers stiffened to indicate 
that if he had been given hind legs, they would be ready 
for a spring. So worn was the gargoyle that ears and 
chin and part of forehead had disappeared. But you 
can see the snarl just as you can see the Sphinx's smile. 
When a thing is well done, it is done for all time. If 
a poor workman had fashioned that gargoyle, there 
would have been no panther and no snarl when it was 
put up there. But a master worked the stone, and what 
he wrought is ineradicable. It will disappear only with 
the stone itself. When we speak of ruins, we mean 
that a part of the material used in expressing a concep- 
tion has not resisted climate and age and earthquake and 
vandalism. Armless, Venus de Milo is still the perfect 
woman. Headless, Nike of Samothrace is still symbolic 
of the glory of prevailing. 

In the morning, before reaching St. Raphael, we passed 
an African soldier limping along the dusty road. He 
[i68] 




"Arose a huge square tower of the Norman period" 



FREJUS 



was dispirited even to the crumpled look of his red fez, 
and the sun, shining mercilessly, glinted from his rifle- 
barrel to the beads of perspiration on the back of his 
neck. We were going fast, and had just time to wave 
gayly to cheer him up. He did not return our salute. 
This struck us as strange. Fearing that he might be ill, 
we made the cocher turn round, and went back to pick 
him up. He declared that a sprained ankle made it im- 
possible for him to keep up with his regiment, which had 
been marching since early morning. He was grateful 
for the lift, and beamed when we assured him that we 
could take him as far as St. Raphael. At that time we 
were not thinking of going to Frejus, the garrison town 
of the African troops. When we overtook the regiment 
and reached his company, we tried to intercede with the 
French sergeant. The sergeant was adamant and posi- 
tive. 

"A thousand thanks, but the man is shamming. He is 
lazy. He must get out." 

We had to give up our soldier. The sergeant knew his 
men, and justice is the basic doctrine which guides the 
discipline of the French colonial army. The regiment of 
Algerians must have stopped for lunch or maneuvers. 
For they were just coming through the Place du Marche 
when I reached there. Only the colonel was on horse. 
At the turn of the road, the captains stood out of rank 
to watch their companies wheel. Our soldier of the 
morning passed. He had forgotten his limp. The ser- 
geant recognized me, and pointed to the soldier. His 
[169] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



left upper eyelid came down with a wink, as if to say, 
"Don't I know them !" 

There is a spirit of camaraderie between officers and 
men in Frejus that one never sees in native regiments of 
the British army. The French have none of our Anglo- 
Saxon feeling of caste and race prejudice, which makes 
discipline depend upon aloofness. French officers can be 
severe without being stem : and they know the difference 
between poise and pose. We Anglo-Saxons need to re- 
vise radically our judgment of the French in regard to 
certain traits that are the sine qua non of military 
efficiency. Energy, resourcefulness, coolness, persist- 
ence, endurance, pluck — where have these pet virtues of 
ours been more strikingly tested, where have they been 
more abundantly found, than in the French army? 

The sign of the French colonial army is an anchor, 
and Frejus is full of officers who wear it. They are 
mostly men of the Midi, Roman Gauls every inch of 
them. The Lamys, the Gallienis, the Joffres, the Fochs, 
the Lyauteys were born with a genius for leadership in 
war. Their aptitude for African conquest and their joy 
in African colonization are the heritage of their native 
land. The fortunes of southern France and northern 
Africa were inseparable through the ten centuries of the 
spread of civilization and the Latin and Teutonic in- 
vasions in the Western Mediterranean. The connection 
was unbroken from the time that Hannibal marched his 
African troops through Frejus to Italy until the Omay- 
yads conquered Tunis, Algeria and Morocco. It is the 
[170] 



FREJUS 

hiost natural thing in the world to see African troops in 
Frejus. They belong here now, because since men be- 
gan to sail in ships, they have always been at home here 
as friends or enemies. Mediterranean Africa and Medi- 
terranean France received simultaneously political, so- 
cial and religious institutions, and from the same source. 
As the Crescent wanes, Gaul is coming back into her 
own. 

Frejus shopkeepers suffer from the proximity of the 
upstart St. Raphael. Frejus keeps the bishop, but St. 
Raphael has taken the trade. There is now only one 
business street. It runs from the Place du Marche 
through the center of the city to the Place du Dome. 
You can get from one place to the other in about five 
minutes. Few people were on this street in mid-after- 
noon. None were going into the shops. I chose the 
department store, and asked the only saleswoman in sight 
for a collar. She brought down two styles, both of 
v/hich were bucolic. Matched with a beflowered tie, 
either would have gone perfectly around the neck of a 
Polish immigrant in New York on his wedding day. I 
suggested that I be shown some other styles. The sales- 
woman gazed at me stonily. 

"A bus leaves the corner below here for St. Raphael 
every hour. You are there in twenty minutes. Or you 
can go by train in six minutes." 

Up went the boxes to their shelf. There was nothing 
for me to do but get out. 

One says Place du Dome or Place de I'Hotel de Ville, 
[171] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



depending upon whether sympathies are ultramontane or 
anti-clerical. For cathedral and city hall touch each 
other at right angles. LIBERTE-EGALITE-FRA- 
TERNITE is the legend in large letters on the cathedral 
wall: the one notice posted on the Hotel de Ville is a 
warning of the last day to pay taxes. Two beggars 
stand guard at the cathedral portal: Senegalese with 
fixed bayonets flank the archway leading to the municipal 
courtyard. The Hotel de Ville is a modern building, 
typical of French official taste of the present day: the 
cathedral is an edifice of several epochs, with a brick 
fa9ade reminiscent of Bologna. The episcopal palace, 
adjacent to the cathedral, is part of the same structure. 
But it is used for government offices, and the entrance to 
its upper floor is by a staircase from the vestibule of the 
cathedral. The Service de Sante Municipale occupies 
the rooms along the portico that faces the cloister. The 
cure of souls has been banished to a private house across 
the street. 

The cathedral quarter is wholly Louis XVI and First 
Empire. If I had begun my ramble there, I should have 
found much to admire. But I had been spoiled by the 
Louis XIII quarter nearer the sea. Travel impressions 
are largely dependent upon itinerary. I am often able 
to surprise a compatriot whose knowledge of Europe is 
limited to one "bang-up trip, and there wasn't much we 
missed, y'know," by being able to tell him the order in 
which he visited places. It is an easy thing to do. You 
simply have to notice how the tourist compares cities and 
[172] 



FREJUS 

other "sights." He is bHssfully ignorant of the fact that 
his positive judgments, his unhesitating preferences are 
accidental. They do not express at all his real tastes 
and his real appreciation of values. However cultivated 
and intelligent an observer he may be, unless he has care- 
fully weighed and made proper allowance for the in- 
fluence of itinerary, his judgments and preferences are 
not to be taken seriously. For years I honestly believed 
that the Rue de la Porte Rosette was one of the finest 
streets in the world. I told my friends of it. But when 
Alexandria was revisited, the Rue de la Porte Rosette 
was a shabby thoroughfare. After a year in the in- 
terior of Asia Minor, the Rue de la Porte Rosette was 
the first street through which I drove in coming back 
to European civilization. The next time I saw it I was 
fresh from years of constant residence in Paris. In my 
memory, Sofia is a gem of an up-to-date city, while 
Bucharest is a poor imitation of the occidental munici- 
pality. The chances are more than even that my com- 
parative estimate of the two Balkan capitals is wholly 
wrong. For each time I have visited Sofia, it was in 
coming from Turkey, while stops at Bucharest have fol- 
lowed immediately after Buda-Pest and Odessa. 

I wandered through the cathedral quarter with less en- 
thusiasm than was its due, and soon decided to rejoin the 
Artist. He was not in the neighborhood of any of the 
Roman ruins. He was not sitting behind an aperitif on 
a cafe terrace. He was not watching soldiers play foot- 
ball in the courtyard of the barracks. He was not 
[173] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



sketching the Norman tower. He was not exploring 
alleys of the medieval quarter. He was not looking at 
hydroplanes over the fence of the aerodrome. My quest 
had led me unconsciously back to the beach. There was 
still an hour before our rendezvous. But where we had 
stretched in the sand after lunch was a delightful spot, 
and I had remembered to have my pouch filled at a 
tabac. I was not going to feel bored waiting for him. 
Where the German prisoners were working on the pier, 
the black soldier guards called out to me to give a wide 
berth. Not being a local fisherman, I thought it wise to 
obey. The place of our siesta had to be reached by going 
through ruins and climbing over a dune. The Artist was 
there. 

"You know," he explained, ignoring with the sweep 
of his hand the Roman mole where a new bevy of mer- 
maids had appeared, "the progress of aviation has fasci- 
nated me ever since that July day at Rheims when 
Wright went up and stayed up. Just look what those 
fellows are doing!" 

Hydroplanes were appearing from the aerodrome. 
When they struck the water there was a hiss, which 
grew in volume and acuity as they skimmed the waves. 
After a few hundred yards, the machines rose as easily 
as from land, circled up to the clouds and into them. 
Coming down, the aviators practiced dipping and swerv- 
ing by following and avoiding the purposely irregular 
course of motor-boats. An officer, who spoke to us to 
find out, I suppose, who we were and why we were there, 
[1741 




'Exploring the alleys of the medieval quarter 



FREJUS 



remarked that the aviators were beginners. We were 
astonished. If this was learning to fly, what was flying? 

"Our boys need little teaching to learn to fly," he ex- 
plained. "That comes naturally. What they are learn- 
ing is how to use their machines for fighting. Science 
and training and practice come in there. A world-old 
game is before you. It is only the medium that is new." 

Words of wisdom. A bit of aqueduct led us to 
Frejus in the hope of tasting the charm of a more ancient 
past than we had found in other Riviera cities. We 
were not disappointed. The charm was there. But we 
would not have found it, had we tried to dissociate it 
from the present, had we ignored or deplored its setting. 
Nothing that lives assimilates what is foreign to its na- 
ture: nothing that lives survives dissection. We took 
Frejus as Frejus was, and not as we wanted it to be or 
thought it must be. We took the aerodrome with the 
hippodrome, the coal merchant with the Norman tower, 
the parrot with the gargoyle, the Hotel de Ville with the 
cathedral, and the mermaids with the mole. 



[1751 



SAINT-RAPHAEL 



[i77l 



#'^^; 




CHAPTER XIV 
Saint-Raphael 

ON the terrace of our little home at Theoule, a 
lover of the Riviera read v^^hat I had written about 
Frejus. 

"If you have any idea of making a book out of your 
Riviera articles," she said positively, "do not think you 
can dismiss the Esterel and Saint-Raphael in so cavalier 
a fashion. That may be all right for Lester Hornby and 
you and serve as a good introduction to a story on 
Frejus, but in your project of a book on Riviera 
towns — '* 

There is no need to say more. I looked over to the 
hills of the Esterel and felt sorry I had neglected them. 
I thought of past experiences, and agreed that there was 
something more to write about the French end of the 
Riviera. And then we put our heads together over a 
time table, planned to go to Agay by train, and walk on 
[179] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



the rest of the way to Saint-Raphael. If the weather 
was good, we should climb Mont Vinaigre, and see the 
Esterel from its highest point. 

"I don't care whether it affords good subjects for 
Lester or not," declared my boss. "I've done the trip, 
and I know it will be fun — and remember what Horatio 
was told !" 

Humankind and human habitation had occupied the 
Artist and myself on almost every day afield from 
Theoule. Of course we had taken in the scenery, 
sketched it and spoken about it, but only as a background 
or accompaniment. From Cannes to Menton it is the 
human side of the Riviera that gets you. Nature is a 
sort of musical accompaniment to the song of human 
activity. Between Cannes and the Italian frontier, 
where the railway does not skirt the coast, you have the 
tramway. It is with you always, night and day, and 
makes itself heard at every curve. (The road is all 
curves!) As a result of the tramway, or perhaps as its 
cause, the Cannes-Menton stretch of the Riviera is solidly 
built up. Where the towns do not run into each other, 
an unbroken line of villas links them up. It is all the 
city — ^you cannot get away from that. 

The road we follow to Frejus was opened in 1903, a 
gift to the nation from the initiative and enterprise of 
the Touring-Club de France. The building of a tram 
line was fortunately forbidden. But with the railway 
and rapidly-developing use of the automobile, the little 
villages of the Esterel coast are being rapidly built up. 
[180] 



SAINT-RAPHAEL 



Around the cape from Theoule, Le Trayas will soon rival 
Saint-Raphael as a center for Esterel excursions. Then 
we have Antheor, Agay, and Boulouris before reaching 
the long and charming villa-covered approach to Saint- 
Raphael. 

But we do not need to worry yet about what is going 
to happen. The blessed fact remains that the Esterel, 
between Theoule and Saint-Raphael, is not yet closely 
populated like the rest of the Riviera. The tramway has 
not come. The railway frequently goes out of sight, if 
not out of hearing, for a mile or two. You have nature 
all by herself, with no houses, no human beings, no hu- 
man inventions. The interior of the Esterel is as re- 
freshingly different from the hinterland of the rest of 
the Riviera as most of the coast. There are no cities 
and towns back on the hills, no railways and tramways, 
no fine motor roads to make the pedestrian's progress 
a disagreeable and almost continuous passage through 
clouds of dust. The Esterel is hills and valleys, streams 
and forests and birds. You do not even have poles and 
wires to remind you of the world you have left for the 
moment. 

The only way one comes to know this country is to 
have a villa on its fringe, as we did, and get lost in it 
every time you try to explore it. But such good fortune 
does not fall to everyone — nor the time — so it is com- 
forting to point out that much of interest in the Esterel 
can be visited by motorists from the Comiche. Between 
La Napoule and Agay, the Touring-Club de France has 
[ i8i ] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



put sign-posts at every little path leading from the 
Corniche back into the interior. Some paths, also, where 
the road mounts on Cap Roux, lead down to grottoes 
on the water's edge or out to cliffs. Each sign gives 
the attraction and the distance. In our walks from 
Theoule we explored most of these, but discovered that 
one must not have an objective for lunch. For there is 
no connection between the number of kilometers and the 
time you must take. A map and compass are wise pre- 
cautions. Some paths are scarcely marked at all, and 
when you have to slide down the side of a volcanic hill 
into a ravine and try to guess where you are supposed 
to go next, a woodsman's instinct is needed. The ex- 
cursions are surer because more frequented, but none 
the less charming, after you have rounded the cape and 
crossed the little River Agay. 

Agay, the Agathon of Ptolemy, boasts of the only 
harbor on the Esterel. On one side is the Pointe 
dAntheor and on the other Cap Dramont. Right behind 
the harbor rises the Rastel dAgay, a jagged mass of 
copper rock a thousand feet high, climbing which is an 
excellent preparation for and indication of what one 
may expect in Esterel exploration. The way is not made 
easy for you as it is in the eastern end of the Riviera. 
But unless you strike an exceptionally warm day you 
have the will for pushing on afoot that is completely 
lacking at Monte Carlo and Menton. 

The most ambitious and most interesting excursion 
into the Esterel that can be made in a day's walk is to 
[182] 



SAINT-RAPHAEL 



go to Saint-Raphael from Agay by way of Mont 
Vinaigre. You must make an early start and be ready 
to put in from five to six hours if you want to eat your 
lunch on the highest peak of the Esterel. It took us 
from seven o'clock to noon, and we kept going steadily. 
Crossing the railway, we struck out to the right of the 
Agay through forests of pine and cork to Le Gratadls, 
then along the Ravin du Pertus, pushing through the 
underbrush in blossom and skirting the many walls of 
rock that served to indicate where the path was not. It 
would have been easier to have made the round trip from 
Saint-Raphael. But we should not have the full realiza- 
tion of the wild beauty of the Esterel nor that joyful 
feeling of reaching astra per as per a. The way down to 
Saint-Raphael, after descending to Le Malpey, less than 
an hour from the summit, is by a carriage road. 

We wished we could have seen the stars from Mont 
Vinaigre. There was a belvedere, and if we had only 
brought our blankets! But however warm the day, the 
nights are cool, especially two thousand feet up. Only 
those who have slept out at night m Mediterranean 
countries know how cold it can get. The top of Mont 
Vinaigre, almost in the center of the Esterel, affords a 
view of the ensemble of volcanic hills crowded together 
by themselves that makes you realize why it is so easy 
to get lost in the valleys between them. The forests are 
thick and the ravines go every which way. Inland the 
Esterel is separated from the foothills of the Maritime 
Alps by the valleys of the Riou Blanc and Siagne through 
[183] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



which runs the main road to Grasse, with a branch down 
the Siagne to Mandelieu. On the northern slope of the 
mountain is the road from Frejus to Cannes, which 
leaves the Esterel at Mandelieu. It is one of the oldest 
roads in France. Several Roman milestones have re- 
cently been unearthed here. In these hills the Romans 
found coal and copper, and from the quarries along the 
coast at Boulouris and on Cap Dramont the quarries of 
blue porphyry are still worked. 

In mining possibilities the whole region is as rich as 
it was twenty centuries ago ; but, as in many other parts 
of France, little has been done to take advantage of them. 
Some years ago an American friend of mine, motoring 
with his wife from Frejus to Cannes, discovered coal 
fields, formed a company, and is now drawing a revenue 
from hills whose former owners knew them only as pre- 
serves for shooting wild boar and other wild game. 
Within her own boundaries France has coal enough for 
all her needs if only she would mine it. But the French 
love to put their money into safe bonds of their own and 
foreign governments. The woolen stocking does not 
give up its hoarded coins for such enterprises as mines 
and domestic industries. Daughter's dot must be in a 
form acceptable to the prospective bridegroom's family. 
And then the French do not breed the new generation 
sufficiently large to furnish laborers for developing the 
natural resources of the country. They are hostile to 
immigration. When the war came Asia and Africa were 
called upon to man munition plants. 
[184] 







"We discovered that Saint-Raphael had its old town" 



SAINT-RAPHAEL 



After the lesson of this war will the French seek to 
make their own country give up its wealth, or will they 
be willing once more to invest abroad, relying upon an 
aggressive foreign and colonial policy to open up and 
protect fields for capital far from home? On the edge 
of the Esterel, a dozen miles away, at Frejus, Saint- 
Raphael and Cannes, the people have put their money 
into Russian and Turkish bonds, Brazilian railways and 
coffee plantations. Their sons go to Algeria and 
Morocco to seek a fortune. Is this why only the com- 
ing of tourists and residents from a less hospitable clime 
has wrought any change in the country during the nine- 
teenth century? From the standpoint of natural pro- 
duction the Riviera is relatively less important, less self- 
supporting than before the railway came. 

By the forester's house of Le Malpey, after an hour's 
descent, we strike the carriage road. An hour and a 
half brings us to Valescure, an English colony built in 
pine woods. Another half hour and we are at Saint- 
Raphael. 

The next morning we discovered that Saint-Raphael 
had its Old Town, which escaped us on our trip to Frejus. 
Only the new name of the main street — Rue Gambetta — 
indicated that we were in France of the Third Republic. 
But, as in Grasse, we felt that we were really in France 
of all the centuries. There was none of that unmistak- 
ably Italian atmosphere that still makes itself felt in 
Nice, once you wander into quarters east of the Place 
Massena. The thick walls of the old church — far too 
[185] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



massive for its size — bear witness to the period when a 
Mediterranean coast town church was sanctuary more 
than in name. To the church the people fled when the 
Saracen pirates came, and while the priests prayed they 
acted on the adage that God helps those who help them- 
selves, pouring molten lead from the roof and shoot- 
ing arbalests through meurtrieres that can still be dis- 
tinguished despite bricks and plaster. This is the Saint- 
Raphael that Napoleon knew when he returned from 
Egypt and, fifteen years later, sailed for his first exile 
at Elba. 

But we found much that was attractive in the new 
Saint-Raphael, which is as French as the old. The Eng- 
lish keep themselves mostly at Valescure. Tourists come 
on chars-a-hancs for lunch, and hurry back to Nice. 
Saint-Raphael has developed as a French watering place. 
It does not have the protection of the high wall of the 
Maritime Alps. When the mistral, bane of the Midi, 
is not blowing, however, you wonder whether the native- 
born have not picked out for a seashore resort a more de- 
lightful bit of the Riviera coast than foreigners. A 
Frenchman once told me that Saint-Raphael was the 
logical Riviera town for the French simply because the 
night train from Paris landed a traveler there in time for 
noon lunch. 

"This fact alone," he declared to me, "would induce 

me to choose Saint-Raphael in preference to Cannes and 

Nice. You know that when twelve o'clock has struck 

the day is ruined for a Frenchman if he is not reasonably 

[i86] 



SAINT-RAPHAEL 



sure of being able to sit down pretty soon to a good hot 
meal. The P.-L.-M. put Cannes and Nice just a little 
bit beyond our limit." 

As you emerge from the Old Town, at the harbor, you 
pass by a large modem church in Byzantine style, whose 
portal shows to excellent advantage six porphyry columns 
from the nearby Boulouris quarries. Along the sea is 
the Boulevard Felix-Martin, which runs into the Cor- 
niche de I'Esterel. For several miles you feel that there 
is nothing to detract from the spell of the sea. Else- 
where on the Riviera you have promenades embellished 
by great buildings and monuments and forts and exotic 
trees. You have coves and capes and villa-clad hills with 
the Alpine background. You climb cliffs and see the 
Mediterranean at bends, through trees and across 
luxurious gardens. Panorama after panorama with dis- 
tractions galore react on you like a picture gallery. But 
at Saint-Raphael the sea dominates. The Mediterranean 
alone holds you. 

This is why you cannot endorse the bald statement 
flung at you by the famous sundial of the Rue de France 
at Nice: 

"lo vado e vengo ogni giorno, 
Ma tu andrai senza ritorno." 

It may be true enough of Nice that you will not go 
back. One has the confusion of human activities every- 
where and tires of it everywhere. But just the sea alone 
is always new. Of course in the end the immortal sun 
[187] 



KIVIERA TOWNS 



has the better of you. But as long as Hfe does last the 
effort will be made to get back to the Boulevard Felix- 
Martin at Saint-Raphael. For there, better than any- 
where else on the Riviera, one can look at the sea. 



[i88] 



THEOULE 



[189] 




CHAPTER XV 



Theoule 



THE Riviera belongs to a frontier department. To 
travel in frontier departments in vi^ar time a sauf- 
conduit is necessary. In theory, the sauf -conduit is good 
for a single trip and has to be renewed each time one 
goes from place to place. In theory, wherever a night 
is spent, a permis de sejour must be obtained from the 
local authorities. In theory, one may not sketch at all. 
But the Riviera is far from the battle front. Suspicious 
foreigners were caught in the police drag-net during the 
first year of the war, and since Italy came in on the side 
of France, the military authorities have not bothered 
much about enforcing their rules in the Alpes Maritimes. 
If one takes the initiative and insists upon being always 
en regie, bureaucracy holds to the strict letter of the law. 
But one who is not looking for trouble does not find it. 
Hotel proprietors, all-powerful in Riviera towns, do not 
want their clients bothered. Public sentiment is with 
the hotel proprietors: for the prosperity of the Riviera 
depends upon the unhampered coming and going of 
[191] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



tourists and temporary residents. Maires and adjoints 
and gendarmes — and their relatives — ^have villas to let. 
It is to their interest to minimize red tape. Sauf-con- 
duits are given for a month, and rarely asked for. The 
month is up only when one leaves. Permis de sejour are 
not mentioned unless one makes a protracted stay. 

When we decided to settle down in Theoule, and some- 
thing had to be done with our papers, we were dismayed 
to discover that the mairie was at Mandelieu, several 
miles inland. Helen and the children had a passport 
separate from mine, and our maids were English. 
Should we all have to "appear in person," as the rule 
stated? The adjoint at Theoule declared that he could 
not think of allowing us to put ourselves out one least 
little bit, and were not the maids "cheres alliees"? He 
would give himself the pleasure of taking our passports 
to Mandelieu to be registered and stamped. In the 
evening Monsieur I'Adjoint returned with permis de 
sejour in due form. Then he broached the subject near 
his heart. We were a large family and would tire of 
the hotel. The children needed a garden of their own 
to play in. The villa we wanted was waiting for us. 
It was right on the sea, and the view from the terrace — 
well, we could judge for ourselves tomorrow morning. 

This was going a little too fast. The obligation of 
having papers expeditiously arranged was a great one, 
but we did not care to spend two or three months paying 
it off. We made an appointment for after lunch the 
next day, in order to have the morning to look over 
[192] 



THEOULE 



villas independently. Luckily Monsieur 1' Ad joint's villa 
seemed all that he claimed it to be, and before our 
rendezvous with him we had decided that the location 
was ideal. 

From Cannes to Menton the Riviera is cursed with 
electric tram lines. Only on Cap Martin can you live 
away from the shrieking of wheels around curves and the 
clanging of motormen's bells. We were led beyond 
Cannes to the Comiche de I'Esterel by the absence of a 
tram line. We could not get away from the railway, 
however, without abandoning the coast. Is there any 
place desirable for living purposes in which the railway 
does not obtrude? When choosing a country residence, 
men with families, unless they have several motors and 
several chauffeurs, must stick close to the railway. 
Monsieur I'Adjoint was showing us the salon of his villa 
when a whistle announced the Vintimille express. He 
hastened to anticipate the train by reassuring us that 
there was a deep cut back of the villa and that the road- 
bed veered away from us just at the corner of the garden. 
It was in the neighboring villa that trains were really 
heard. We were to believe him — at that moment chan- 
deliers and windows and two vases of dried grasses on 
the mantelpiece danced a passing greeting to the train. 
Monsieur I'Adjoint thought that he had failed to carry 
the day. But we live on a Paris boulevard, and know 
that noises are comparative. Vintimille expresses were 
not going to pass all the time. 

We were glad that the railway had not deterred us. 
[193] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



It was good to be right above the water. Some people 
do not like the glare of sun reflected from the sea. But 
they are late risers. Parents of small children are ac- 
customed to waking with the sun. On the first morning 
in the Villa Etoile the baby chuckled early. Sun spots 
were dancing on the ceiling, and she was watching them. 
The breakfast on the terrace was no hurried swallowing 
of a cup of coffee with eyes fixed upon a newspaper 
propped against a sugar bowl. The agreement of the 
day before had been tripartite. The proprietor was 
easily satisfied with bank notes. But the wife had not 
consented to leave the freedom of the hotel until it had 
been solemnly agreed that newspapers were to be refused 
entrance into the Villa Etoile, and that watches were not 
to be drawn out (even furtively) from waistcoat pockets. 
Unless agreements are fortified by favorable circum- 
stances and constantly recurring interest, they are seldom 
lived up to. When promises are difficult to keep, where 
are the men of their word? Doing what one does not 
want to do is a sad business. That is why Puritanism 
is associated with gloom. On the terrace of the Villa 
Etoile no man could want to look at a newspaper or a 
watch. Across the Gulf of La Napoule lies Cannes. 
Beyond Cannes is the Cap d'Antibes. Mountains, 
covered with snow and coming down to the sea in suc- 
cessive chains, form the eastern horizon. Inland, Grasse 
is nestled close under them. Seaward, the lies de Lerins 
seem to float upon the water. For on Sainte-Marguerite 
the line of demarcation between Mediterranean blue and 
[194] 







'To the west the Gulf of La Napoule ends in the 
pine-covered promontory of the Esquillon" 



THEOULE 



forest green is sharp, and Saint-Honorat, dominated by 
the soft gray of the castle and abbey, is like a reflected 
cloud. Between Theoule and Cannes the railway crosses 
the viaduct of the Siagne. Through the arches one can 
see the golf course on which an English statesman 
thought out the later phases of British Imperialism. To 
the west, the Gulf of La Napoule ends in the pine- 
covered promontory of the Esquillon. Except for a very 
small beach in front of the Theoule hotel, the coast is 
rocky. From February to May our terrace outlook com- 
peted successfully with the war. 

Young and old in Theoule have to make a daily effort 
to enjoy educational and religious privileges. We won- 
dered at first why the school and church were placed on 
the promontory, a good mile and a half from the town. 
But later we came to realize that this was a salutary 
measure. The climate is insidious. A daily antidote 
against laziness is needed. I was glad that I volunteered 
to take the children to school at eight and two, and go 
after them at eleven and four, and that they held me to 
it. In order to reach a passable route on the steep wall 
of rock and pine, the road built by the Touring-Club de 
France makes a bend of two kilometers in the valley be- 
hind Theoule. By taking a footpath from the hotel, the 
pedestrian eliminates the be»d in five minutes. In spite 
of curves, the road is continuously steep and keeps a 
heavy grade until it reaches the Pointe de I'Esquillon, 

I never tired of the four times a day. Between the 
Villa Etoile and the town was the castle, built on the 
[195] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



water's edge. After Louis XIV it became a soap fac- 
tory, and was restored to its ancient dignity only recently. 
I ought not to say "dignity," for the restorer was a baron 
of industry, and his improvements are distressing. The 
entrance* to the park created on the inner side of the 
road opposite the chateau is the result of landscape den- 
tistry. The creator did not find that the natural rock 
lent itself to his fancies, and filled in the hollows with 
stones of volcanic origin. On the side of the hill, foun- 
tains and pools and a truly massive flight of steps have 
been made. Scrawny firs are trying to grow where they 
ought not to. Quasi-natural urns overflow with captive 
flowers, geraniums and nasturtiums predominating. 
Ferns hang as gracefully as shirtings displayed in a de- 
partment store window. Stone lions defy, and terra 
cotta stags run away from, porcelain dogs. There are 
bowers and benches of imitatioil petrified wood. 

American money may be responsible for the chateau 
garden, but the villas of Theoule are all French. 
Modern French artistic genius runs to painting and 
clothes. There is none left for building or house-fur- 
nishing. French taste, as expressed in homes, inside 
and outside, is as bad as Prussian. We may admire 
mildly the monotonous symmetry of post-Haussmann 
Paris. When we get to the suburbs and to the provincial 
towns and to summer and winter resorts, we have to con- 
fess that architecture is a lost art in France. In America, 
especially in our cities, we have regrettable traces of mid- 
Victorianism, and we have to contend with Irish poli- 
[196] 



THEOULE 



ticians and German contractors. In the suburbs, and in 
the country, however, where xA.mericans build their own 
homes, we have become accustomed to ideas of beauty 
that make the results of the last sixty years of European 
growth painful to us. Our taste in line, color, decora- 
tion, and interior furnishing is at hopeless variance with 
that of twentieth-century Europe. We admire and we 
buy in Europe that which our European ancestors 
created. Our admiration — and our buying — is confined 
strictly to Europe of the past. Present-day Europe dis- 
plays German Schmuck from one end to the other, and 
France is no exception. 

On the walk to school you soon get beyond the chateau 
and the villas. But even on the promontory there is 
more than the dodging of automobiles to remind one that 
this is the twentieth century. The Corniche de I'Esterel 
has been singled out by the moving-picture men for play- 
ing out-of-door scenarios. When the sun is shining, a 
day rarely passes without film-making. The man with a 
camera has the rising road and bends around which the 
action can enter into the scene, the forest up and the 
forest down, the Mediterranean and mountain and island 
and Cannes backgrounds. Automobile hold-ups with 
pistols barking, the man and the maid in the woods and 
on the terrace, the villain assaulting and the hero rescuing 
the defenseless woman, the heroine jumping from a rock 
into the sea, and clinging to an upturned boat — these are 
commonplace events on the Corniche de I'Esterel. 

The world of cinemas and motors does not rise early. 
[197] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



On the morning walk, children and squirrels and birds 
were all one met. Children go slowly, and squirrels and 
birds belong to nature. There was always time to 
breathe in the forest and the sea and to look across to 
the mountains. When cartables and gouters were 
handed over at the school gate, parental responsibility 
ceased for three hours. One had the choice of going 
on around the point towards Trayas or down to the sea. 
The people of Theoule say that Corsica, sixty miles 
away, can be seen from the Esquillon. All one has to do 
is to keep going day after day until "atmospheric condi- 
tions are favorable." The Touring-Club de France has 
built a belvedere at the extremity of the Esquillon. 
Arrows on a dial indicate the direction of important 
places from Leghorn to Marseilles. The Apennines be- 
hind Florence, as well as Corsica, are marked as within 
the range of visibility. The Apennines had not been 
seen for years, but Corsica was liable to appear at any 
time. The first day the Artist went with me to the 
Esquillon, an Oldest Inhabitant said that we had a Cor- 
sica day. A milkwoman en route reported Corsica in 
sight, and told us to hurry. Towards nine o'clock the 
sun raises a mist from the sea, she explained. In the 
belvedere we found a girl without a guide book who had 
evidently come over from Trayas. She was crouched 
down to dial level, and her eyes were following the 
Corsica arrow. She did not look up or move when we 
entered. Minutes passed. There was no offer to give 
us a chance. We coughed and shuffled, and the Artist 
[198] 



THEOULE 



sang "The Little Gray Home ift the West." I informed 
the Artist — in French — that a speciahst had once re- 
marked upon my hyperopia powers, and that if Corsica 
were really in sight I could not fail to see it. 

Not until she had to shake the cramp out of her back 
did the girl straighten up. 

"Corsica is invisible today," she announced. 

"Yes," I answered sadly. "Ten minutes ago the mist 
began to come up. You know, sun upon the water — " 
A look in her eyes made me hesitate. "And all that sort 
of thing," I ended lamely. 

"Nonsense," she said briskly. She surveyed the Artist 
from mustache to cane point and turned back to me. 
"You, at least," she declared, "are American, but of the 
unpractical sort. And you are as unresourceful as you 
are ungallant. Monsieur. How do I know? Well, you 
were complaining about my monopolizing the dial. 
There is a map on the tiles under your feet, and a com- 
pass dangles uselessly from your watch-chain. I won- 
der, too, if you are hyperopic. You know which is the 
Carlton Hotel over there in Cannes. Tell me how many 
windows there are across a floor." 

The atmosphere was wonderfully clear, and the Carl- 
ton stood out plainly. But I failed the test. 

The girl laughed. I did not mind that. When the 
Artist started in, I turned on him savagely. 

"Well, you count the Carlton windows," I said. 

"No specialist ever told me I was hyperopia," he came 
back. 

[199] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



I had to 'save the day by answering that I was glad 
to be myopic just now. Who wanted to see Corsica any 
longer? The girl knew interesting upper paths on the 
western side of the promontory. She had as much time 
as we, or rather, I must say regretfully, she and the 
Artist had more time than I. For eleven o'clock came 
quickly, and I hurried off to fulfill my parental duty. 
The Artist told me afterwards that there was a fine 
cuisine at the Trayas restaurant. 

I did think of my compass one day: for I had sore 
need of it. But, as generally happens in such cases, I 
was not wearing it. Between Theoule and La Napoule, 
the nearest town on the way to Cannes, a tempting forest 
road leads back into the valley. A sign states that a 
curious view of a mountain peak, named after Marcus 
Aurelius, could be had by following the road for half, 
a dozen kilometers. It was one of the things tourists 
did when they were visiting the Comiche for a day. 
Consequently, when one was staying on the Corniche, it 
was always an excursion of the morrow. During the 
Artist's first week, we were walking over to Mandelieu 
to take the tram to Cannes one morning, and suddenly 
decided that the last thing in the world for sensible folks 
to do was to go to Cannes on a day when the country was 
calling insistently. We turned in at the sign. After we 
had seen the view, we thought that it would be possible 
to take a short cut back to Theoule. The wall of the 
valley that shut us off from the sea must certainly be 
the big hill just behind the Villa Etoile. If, instead of 
[200] 



,/5m--fr"i">>! 




"Despite curves, the road is continuously steep, and 

keeps a heavy grade until it reaches the 

Pointe da I'Esquillon" 



THEOULE 



retracing our steps towards La Napoule, we kept ahead, 
and remembered to take the left at every cross path, we 
would come out at the place where the Corniche road 
made its big bend before mounting to the promontory. 
It was all so simple that it could not be otherwise. We 
were sure of the direction, and fairly sure of the distance, 
since we had left the motor road between Theoule and 
La Napoule. 

There was an hour and a half before lunch. A lumber 
road followed the brook, and the brook skirted the hill 
beyond which was TheouJe and the Villa Etoile. It was 
a day to swear by, and April flowers were in full bloom. 
It was delightful imtil we had to confess that the hill 
showed no signs of coming down to a valley on the left. 
Finally, at a point where a path went up abruptly from 
the stream, we decided that it would be best to cut over 
the summit of the hill and not wait until the Corniche 
road appeared before us. In this way we would avoid 
the walk back from the hotel to our villa, and come out 
in our own garden. But on the Riviera nature has 
shown no care in placing her hills where they ought to 
be and in symmetrizing and limiting them. They go on 
indefinitely. So did we, until we came to feel that we 
would be like the soldiers of Xenophon once we spied 
the sea. But the cry "Thalassa" was denied us. Even- 
tually we turned back, and tried keeping the hill on the 
right. This was as perplexing as keeping it on the left 
had been. A pair of famished explorers, hungry enough 
to eat canned tuna-fish and crackers with relish, reached 
[201] 



RIVIERA TOWNS 



a little town inland from Mandelieu about seven o'clock 
that night with no clear knowledge of from where or 
how they had come. 

Between the town of Theoule and the belvedere of the 
Esquillon, down along the water's edge, one never tires 
of exploring the caves. Paths lead through the pines 
and around the cliffs. The Artist was attracted to the 
caves by the hope of finding vantage points from which 
to sketch Grasse and Cannes and Antibes and the Alps 
and the castle on Saint-Honorat. But he soon came to 
love the copper rocks, which pine needles had dyed, and 
deserted black and white for colors. When the climate 
got him, he was not loath to join in my hunt for octopi. 
The inhabitants tell thrilling stories of the monsters that 
lurk under the rocks at the Pointe de I'Esquillon and 
forage right up to the town. One is warned to be on 
his guard against long tentacles reaching out swiftly and 
silently. One is told that slipping might mean more 
than a ducking. Owners of villas on the rocks make 
light of octopi stories, and as local boomers are trying 
to make Theoule a summer resort, it is explained that 
the octopi never come near the beach. Even if they did, 
they would not be dangerous there. How could they 
get a hold on the sand with some tentacles while others 
were grabbing you ? 

I have never wanted to see anything quite so badly as 
I wanted to see an octopus at Theoule. Octopus hunt- 
ing surpasses gathering four-leaf clovers and fishing as 
an occupation in which hope eternal plays the principal 

[ 202 ] 



THEOULE 



role. I gradually abandoned other pursuits, and sat 
smoking on rocks by the half day, excusing indolence on 
the ground of the thrilling story I was going to get. I 
learned over again painfully the boyhood way of drink- 
ing from a brook, and lay face downward on island 
stones. With the enthusiastic help of my children, I 
made a dummy stuffed with pine cones, and let him float 
at the end of a rope. Never a tentacle, let alone octopus, 
appeared. I had to rest content with Victor Hugo's 
stirring picture in "The Toilers of the Sea." 

A plotting wife encouraged the octopus hunts by tak- 
ing part in them, and expressing frequently her belief in 
the imminent appearance of the octopi. She declared 
that sooner or later my reward would come. She threw 
off the mask on the first day of May, when she thought 
it was time to return to work. She announced to the 
Artist and me that the octopi had gone over to the 
African coast to keep cool until next winter, and that we 
had better all go to Paris to do the same. We were 
ready. Theoule was still lovely, and the terrace break- 
fasts had lost none of their charm. But one does not 
linger indefinitely on the Riviera unless dolce far niente 
has become the principal thing in life. 



THE END 



[203] 



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